Skip to main content
ISMPMI Congress 2025 Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.

Poster

Session: Session 1 Presenting Authors at Posters (Evens)

P-344 - A RabGAP suppresses autophagy and immune trafficking in plants

Tuesday, July 15, 2025
09:55 - 11:30  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Subcellular dynamics and signaling in host-microbe interactions

Plants depend on autophagy and membrane trafficking to withstand stress, combat infections, and maintain cellular balance. However, the molecular connections between these processes remain poorly understood. Using an AI-driven approach, we identified Rab3GAPL as a key membrane trafficking regulator that inhibits plant autophagy. Rab3GAPL suppresses autophagy by interacting with ATG8, a core autophagy adaptor, and inactivating Rab8a, a small GTPase crucial for autophagosome formation and defense-related secretion. This inhibitory role of Rab3GAPL in autophagy is conserved across three model plant species, and its knockout in Marchantia polymorpha enhances recovery from heat stress. Beyond autophagy, Rab3GAPL also influences focal immunity against the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans by restricting defense-related secretion. Together, these findings suggest that Rab3GAPL functions as a molecular switch to balance autophagic flux and immune secretion by regulating Rab8a-mediated trafficking. This novel interaction between a RabGAP-Rab pair and ATG8 provides fresh insights into the complex membrane transport mechanisms governing plant autophagy and immunity.