Reducing the loss of crops to diseases is an essential factor in providing food for increasing global populations but minimizing demand on fresh water resources and pollution. This project aims to define the natural mechanisms plants share to protect themselves against microbial infection and the methods disease-causing bacteria use to overcome those defenses. Like the human immune response, plant disease defense responses are complex, involving many interacting biochemical pathways. These pathways, however, remain poorly characterized at the molecular level. This project aims to understand how a bacterium that infects a broad range of plant species (Pseudomonas syringae) overcomes natural plant disease defenses. It is anticipated that this information will help agriculture researchers to improve crop yields with minimal detrimental effects on the environment. Disease is caused when the bacteria transfers a dedicated set of its own proteins into plant cells. These proteins interact with molecular complexes in the plant that function in disease defense and prevent them from working. The investigators have developed assays to identify the specific host proteins that are inactivated by one of the transferred bacterial proteins called HopAM1. HopAM1 is one of the few bacterial proteins that induces several easily visualized responses when it is transferred into plant cells. These responses can be used in genetic experiments to identify the plant defense proteins that are affected by HopAM1. The investigators will use molecular genetic methods to identify and characterize the plant proteins affected by HopAM1. This will highlight and define one biochemical defense pathway and provide tools to understand how that pathway is involved in the overall plant defense response.
The project involves training of a doctoral student, a postdoctoral researcher and undergraduate students. The participants will gain experience with genetic, biochemical and cell biological tools. Undergraduate students are regularly involved in the research. Students will be recruited from undergraduate institutions with limited access to federally sponsored research programs, as well as from the research location, UNC Chapel Hill. The students will learn research strategy as well as specialized techniques as they experience the excitement of scientific discovery.
