Over the past few decades, advances in modern science have allowed researchers to uncover new mechanisms that were previously undiscoverable. The knowledge acquired from these advances has proven to be invaluable. The research proposed herein investigates the underlying biological mechanisms that help to combat plant disease outbreaks worldwide. At a basic understanding, plants are generally resistant to most biotic organisms, however the small percentages of organisms that obtain the ability to cause disease have caused many epidemics over the years. Disease outbreaks can very in their severity and their economic impact from instances such as, the Great Irish Potato Famine to fire blight outbreaks in apple orchards across the U.S. on year-to-year basis. This research aims to identify new components of the plant disease-signaling machinery that have been previously undiscoverable due to the technologies available at the time of the research. The principle investigator will work in collaboration with Dr. Yasuomi Tada at Nagoya University to utilized rapid purification of many plant proteins to determine novel protein-protein interactions.
In detail, with the help of Dr. Tada, and his team at Nagoya University, researchers will aim to identify novel interacting proteins using the Arabidopsis protein NDR1 as a target. Non-Race Specific Disease Resistance 1 (NDR1) has been previously shown to be involved in resistance to a variety of plant virulence mechanisms at the molecular level. The loss of the NDR1 protein creates plants that are susceptible to bacterial infection at high levels. It is hypothesized that additional interacting proteins, specifically in plant plasma membranes, are aiding in the cellular function of the protein NDR1, and this action is more governed by ?protein complexes? to initiate the cellular changes necessary for plant resistance to bacterial pathogens. This work will allow better understanding of plant plasma membrane protein complexes and their role in innate immunity, allowing this basic research to translate to more applied applications of plant-microbe interactions. The NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
