Page 68 - Plant Canada 2024 Proceeding

PLANT CANADA 2024

Wednesday, July 10

Dr. Heather McFarlane
University of Toronto

“Modifying the plant cell wall from the inside
out”

Abstract: The plant cell wall is a polysaccharide-
based extracellular matrix that surrounds and
protects all plant cells. Since plants are constantly
growing and developing within the confines of their
cell walls, plant cells must be in constant
communication with their cell walls. Furthermore,
cell walls are a critical line of defense between plant
cells and their environment; changes to the cell wall
are often early warning signs of pathogen attack or
abiotic stress, and plants fortify their cell walls in response to these stresses. This
ongoing communication between the plant cells and their cell walls is collectively called
“cell wall signaling”. Attempts to modify plant cell walls for improved materials or biofuels
have exposed a critical gap in our understanding: inadvertent activation of cell wall
signaling typically cause yield penalties that render these cell wall “improvements”
agriculturally/economically unviable. The McFarlane Lab at The University of Toronto
studies the molecular mechanisms of cell wall signaling and responses, including cell wall
secretion and remodeling. Using a combination of live cell imaging, high-resolution
electron microscopy, genetics, proteomics, and biochemistry, we have recently uncovered
new molecular components of cell wall signaling and provided insights into what types of
modifications the plant cell wall can tolerate without triggering yield losses.

Bio: Dr. Heather E. McFarlane is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Plant
Cell Biology in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology at the University of Toronto. She
earned her PhD at the University of British Columbia (Canada) where she studied the transport
of lipids that form the protective plant cuticle. After her PhD, she joined the Max Planck Institute
for Molecular Plant Physiology (Germany) to study cell wall synthesis as an EMBO postdoctoral
fellow. She then moved to University of Melbourne (Australia) where she was awarded an
Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award to initiate her work on
cell wall signaling. Heather joined the Department of Cell and Systems Biology at the University
of Toronto July 2019. The McFarlane Lab studies cell wall synthesis, secretion, signaling, and
remodeling with a view to improving plant biomass for food, materials, and energy.

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