According to a press release from of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Panagiotis N. Moschou, a researcher at its Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB), has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for research into the mechanisms which may enable plants to adapt to climate change.

Applications for Consolidator Grants are considered from “researchers with 7-12 years of experience since completion of their PhD, a scientific track record showing great promise and an excellent research proposal”. In what is the first ERC grant awarded in Greece in the area of plant biology and biotechnology, Panagiotis Moschou will receive €1.9 million in funding for up to five years.

Helping plants adapt to climate change
According to the FORTH press release: “Perhaps, the most credible existential threat to humankind is climate change. Major components of climate change are heatwaves, which become more durable and unpredictable, and seriously threaten our food security by compromising crop productivity. Despite acknowledging this fact, we know little of how we can protect ourselves, our animals, and most importantly our crops against heatwaves. Furthering our understanding of how cells ‘read’ changes in heat and adapt to it, or to general climate changes, can help combat the escalating problem of food security. Besides, this knowledge can increase our comprehension of how organisms perceive their environment and adapt to it.”

Panagiotis Moschou and his team at FORTH-IMBB have pioneered studies in the formation of novel “emergency assemblies” which store proteins and RNAs. They recently discovered a new code that controls the formation of these emergency assemblies, which are used by cells for rapid and synchronised responses against environmental threats, for example during heatwaves. The team’s aim is to build on this knowledge and introduce new traits in plants or other organisms that will make them more resilient against climate change.

The team will draw on an arsenal of methods that they have established, allowing them to look at what is inside the emergency assemblies and understand how they work. They will then take the next crucial step of rewriting the code that controls their formation. Importantly, to ensure that the results of the study will have practical application, in parallel to the scientific models the team will try to improve tomato plants.

A brief biography
Panagiotis Moschou obtained his BSc in Biology at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. He continued his studies in Molecular Plant Biology at the University of Crete and obtained his PhD in 2009 in Molecular Plant Physiology, studying the roles of polyamine oxidases in plant stress. After military service, in 2010 he moved to Sweden for postdoctoral research at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

In 2018 he was elected Associate Professor of Molecular Plant Physiology at the Biology Department of the University of Crete, and in 2019 he joined IMBB-FORTH as an Affiliated Researcher. His main scientific focus is on how proteins and RNAs interact and assemble in distinct cellular entities with important regulatory functions in development and stress. He is currently coordinating three major research projects with relevance to climate change.
(IMBB, Haniotika Nea)