TOR signaling in the green picoalga Ostreococcus tauri

Target of rapamycin (TOR) is a master regulator that controls growth and metabolism by integrating external and internal signals. Although there was a great progress in the study of TOR in plants and in the model alga Chlamydomonas, scarce data are available in other green algae. Thus, in this work we studied TOR signaling in Ostreococcus tauri, the smallest free-living eukaryote described to date. This picoalga is particularly important because it has a key site at the base of the green lineage and is part of the marine phytoplankton, contributing to global photosynthesis. We investigated OtTOR complex in silico and experimentally, by using first- and second-generation TOR inhibitors, such as rapamycin and PP242. We analyzed the effect of TOR down-regulation on cell growth and on the accumulation of carbon reserves. The results showed that O. tauri responds to TOR inhibitors more similarly to plants than to Chlamydomonas, being PP242 a valuable tool to study this pathway. Besides, Ottor expression analysis revealed that the kinase is dynamically regulated under nutritional stress. Our data indicate that TOR signaling is conserved in O. tauri and we propose this alga as a good and simple model for studying TOR kinase and its regulation.