Popis: |
This project was a collaboration between groups within the Arabidopsis research community and the crop-based research community through which the best resources of both could be utilised to study aspects of resistance to biotrophic pathogens. An objective was to work towards transferring information between models and crop plant. Activation tagged Arabidopsis lines were screened for disease susceptibility to Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato (DC3000). Two mutant lines, named activated disease susceptibility (ads), were confirmed to be susceptible and candidate gene(s) affected by the activation tag were identified. On the other hand, functional analysis of genes in crop species, which currently lack sequenced genomes, relies on post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) approaches that require sequence information prior to experimentation. Suppression subtractive hybridisation isolated a cathepsin B ESTs from P. infestans challenged potato undergoing resistance gene-mediated hypersensitive response (HR). N. benthamiana is mode for studying the HR, is a close relative of potato and therefore an established virus-induced gene silencing system was utilised to investigate the role of cathepsin B. Silencing of cathepsin B resulted in suppression of the Erwinia amylovora-induced HR which was confirmed using mammalian cathepsin B inhibitors. A final aim was the development of a PTGS system in Solanum tuberosum to allow functional investigation for current and future defence-related genes identified from models and crop plant species. A PVX-based VIGS system was successfully developed for cultivated, tetraploid potato cultivars and for wild diploid Solanum species. |