Molecular analysis of plant-parasitic nematodes during their interactions with wild-type and mutant Arabidopsis plants

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Plant-parasitic nematodes are a huge agricultural problem on many of the world’s main food crops. One of the most damaging of the plant-parasitic nematodes is the root-knot nematode. Root-knot nematodes are a serious agricultural threat due to their large host range and lack of natural plant resistance. During the susceptible interaction, root-knot nematodes invade host roots and choose plant cells to convert into metabolically-active feeding sites. The root-knot nematode’s manipulation of the plant cell, and in particular how the nematode is able to regulate host plant pathways, is not well-understood. The aim of this proposal is to further explore plant/root-knot nematode interactions. We want to identify and characterize nematode genes that are critical to successful parasitism as these would be excellent targets for nematode control. To accomplish this goal, we propose to use next generation sequencing technology to study the nematode side of the pathosystem. In particular we aim to focus on the genes encoding nematode proteins that are secreted in planta during the initial infection processes and compare the transcriptional profiles of the nematodes after infection of a susceptible plant and an auxin-insensitive mutant with enhanced nematode resistance. We will then use gene silencing and initiate a novel effector screen to functionally characterize the roles of these nematode genes during parasitism. The information derived from this proposal will provide the foundations to engineer novel nematode resistance in agriculturally important crop plants.