Dissertation Research: Do Virulence Costs Help Maintain Avr Genes in Plant Pathogen Populations?

[107219] bergelson植物可以识别病原体产生的基因产物，这种识别引发强烈的防御反应，严重限制病原体在植物中的生长。植物病害领域的一个重要问题是“为什么病原体携带的基因最终会引发对它们的防御反应”？在这项博士论文改进资助中，研究人员建议寻找与引发植物防御的病原体基因相关的益处。他们建议取一种植物致病菌，去除其中的几个激发子基因，然后比较原始菌株（拥有所有基因）和突变菌株（拥有一部分基因）的表现。研究人员将在温室和自然大田条件下调查包括疾病病理学、流行病学和生存在内的几个因素。农业和植物生物技术产业对病原体防御启动子基因非常感兴趣。现在有可能对植物进行工程改造，使其表达能够识别常见植物病原体的激发子基因的新抗性基因。在尝试这种策略之前，了解引发子基因如何在病原体群体中发挥作用和维持将是有价值的。如果去除启动子基因对病原体几乎没有适应性损失，那么依赖于启动子基因表达的生物技术策略就很容易失败。

0107219BergelsonPlants can recognize gene products produced by pathogens, and this recognition triggers a strong defensive response that severely limits the pathogen's growth in the plant. An important question in the area of plant disease, is "Why do pathogens carry genes which ultimately trigger a defense response against them"? In this Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, the researchers propose to look for benefits associated with the pathogen genes that elicit plant defenses. They propose to take a plant pathogenic bacteria and remove several of the elicitor genes, and then compare the performance of the original strains (which have all the genes) to the mutant strain (which possesses a subset of the genes). The researchers will investigate several factors including disease pathology, epidemiology, and survival, under both greenhouse and natural field conditions. Agriculture and the plant biotechnology industry are very interested in pathogen defense elicitor genes. It is now possible to engineer plants to express new resistance genes that recognize the elicitor genes of common plant pathogens. Before such a strategy is attempted, it would be valuable to understand how the elicitor genes function and are maintained in pathogen populations. If elicitor genes can be removed with little or no fitness cost to the pathogens, then a biotechnology strategy that depends on the expression of elicitor genes can easily fail.