The Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness National Program for Research has awarded the lab with a grant (AGL2015-65866-P) to study long distance metal transport and its regulation in model legume Medicago truncatula. Leaves are the main metal sink in plants, where metals play a critical role a cofactors in photosynthetic reactions. Legumes have additional sinks, the nodules, that also require relatively large levels of metals for symbiotic nitrogen fixation. Considering that many metals are growth-limiting nutrients, legumes have to correctly balance metal allocation to shoots and to nodules to correctly balance carbon and nitrogen fixation. To study this, we will focus on the vascular metal transporters differentially regulated by the symbiosis and the transcription factors regulating them.
