Location: Emerging Pests and Pathogens Research
Project Number: 8062-21000-042-001-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2015
End Date: Sep 14, 2019
Objective:
Previous work has identified most (or all) of the effectors that Pseudomonas syringae strain DC3000 uses to disable plant defenses and many of the components in the plant defense systems that are targeted by the effectors. However, it is still relatively unknown which components of the plant environment trigger the bacteria to deploy its virulence systems, or how the bacteria senses and responds to plant defenses when they are deployed. This agreement proposes to identify the signal receptors and regulation pathways that DC3000 uses to survive within the plant environment.
Approach:
This study will focus on identifying and studying the genes are used by DC3000 to sense features of its environment and regulate its response to these signals. A wide variety of methodologies will be used to dissect the plant-microbe interaction, and new strategies will be developed as required. These include the classic genetic methods such as the generation, selection and screening of mutants under various conditions, the creation of targeted mutants using molecular methods, and the construction of strains that over-express genes of interest. This project will also leverage existing and emerging high-throughput sequencing technologies to perform global studies of gene response to different conditions. Many of these studies will necessarily be performed in planta. Bioinformatics and other computational methods will be used to analyze and integrate results from different experiments.
