Responsible: Jérôme Joubès, Professor at Bordeaux University

Jérôme Joubès obtained his PhD in plant biology in 1999 and his HDR in 2013 at the University of Bordeaux. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Plant Systems Biology at the Royal University of Gent (Belgium, 2000-2002) before joining the LBM in 2003 as a lecturer in biochemistry and then as a University Professor in 2017. Jérôme Joubès was deputy director of the Department “Life and Health Sciences” of the University of Bordeaux (2015-2019) and director of the Research Federation “Integrative Biology and Ecology” (2016-2019). Since 2019, he is the director of the Department of Environmental Sciences which gathers the different units of the Bordeaux site interested in environmental issues.

Members:

F. Domergue (CR), D. Thoraval (MC), S. Pascal (AI), F. Doignon (PR), C. Le Ruyet (PhD), E. Chavonnet (Post-Doc).

Thematique:

Controlling the amount of water inside a plant is critical to its survival.Excess or lack of water causes severe stress in land plants that can even, under extreme conditions, lead to their death. During evolution, plants have adapted their anatomy and physiology in order to maintain a water composition compatible with life, even under adverse environmental conditions.

To do this they have developed :

– The cuticle, consisting of cuticular waxes and cutin, present on their aerial parts, whose role is to control with the stomata the movement of water between the cells of the epidermis and the surrounding air,

– The suberized walls, containing suberin and associated waxes. They are formed in some internal tissues (e.g. root endodermis) or at the interface of the environment (periderm), either constitutively or under the effect of stress and constitute a hydrophobic barrier strongly decreasing the diffusion of water and solutes in the apoplasm. 

Cutin and suberin are plant-specific biopolymers, mainly composed of fatty acid and glycerol derivatives esterified to each other (mainly bi- and tri-functional fatty acids with hydroxyl and/or epoxide and/or carboxyl functions). The suberin also contains a significant amount of phenolic derivatives. Cuticular waxes are made of very long chain fatty acid derivatives: alkanes, alcohols and ketones in particular.

Our studies aim to better understand the biosynthesis, regulation, organization and establishment of the different components of cutin, suberin and waxes and to study the regulation of the expression of the genes that control their quality and quantity under stress conditions, especially water stress.

Key articles:

• Zhang L, Merlin I, Pascal S, Bert PF, Domergue F, Gambetta GA. P. Drought activates MYB41 orthologs and induces suberization of grapevine fine roots. Plant Direct. 2020;4(11):e00278.

• Pascal S., Bernard A., Deslous P., Gronnier J., Fournier-Goss A., Domergue F., Rowland O. and Joubès J. (2019). Arabidopsis CER1-LIKE1 functions in a cuticular very-long-chain alkane-forming complex. Plant Physiology, 179(2):415-432.

• Joubès J. and Domergue F. (2018) Biosynthesis of the plant cuticle. In : Wilkes H. (eds) Hydrocarbons, Oils and Lipids : Diversity, Origin, Chemistry and Fate. Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology. Springer, Cham.

• Domergue F. and Kosma D.K. (2017) Occurrence and biosynthesis of alkyl hydroxycinnamates in plant lipid barriers. Plants 6(3). pii : E25. doi : 10.3390/plants6030025.

• Delude C., Moussu S., Joubès J., Ingram G. and Domergue F. (2016) Plant surface lipids and epidermis development. In “Lipids in Plant and Algae Development”, “Subcellular Biochemistry” vol. 86, Nakamura Y. and Li-Beisson Y. (eds), Springer International Publishing Switzerland, pp 287-313.

• Haslam T.M., Haslam R., Thoraval D., Pascal S., Delude C., Domergue F., Manas-Fernandez A., Beaudoin F., Napier J.A., Kunst L. and Joubès J. (2015). CER2-LIKE proteins have unique biochemical and physiological functions in very-long-chain fatty acid elongation. Plant Physiology, 167 : 682-692.

• Vishwanath S.J., Kosma D. K., Pulsifer I. P., Scandola S., Pascal S., Joubès J., Dittrich-Domergue F., Lessire R., Rowland O. and Domergue F. (2013). Suberin-associated fatty alcohols in Arabidopsis thaliana : distributions in roots and contributions to seed coat barrier properties. Plant Physiology, 163(3) ; 1118-1132.

• Bernard A. and Joubès J. (2013). Arabidopsis cuticular waxes : Advances in synthesis, export and regulation. Progress in Lipid Research, 52:110-129.

• Bernard A., Domergue F., Pascal S., Jetter R., Renne C., Faure J.D., Haslam R.P., Napier J.A., Lessire R. and Joubès J. (2012). Reconstitution of plant alkane biosynthesis in yeast demonstrates that Arabidopsis ECERIFERUM1 and ECERIFERUM3 are core components of a very-long-chain-alkane synthesis complex. Plant Cell, 24(7) : 3106