| Title of Project |
| Wheat phenotyping during root infection by take-all and functional characterization of wheat defense genes |
| This project going to be… |
| Experimental (lab/field) |
| Full Name of Supervisor |
| Wanxin Chen |
| Institution Department and Address |
| West Common Harpenden, Select… AL5-2JQ United Kingdom Map It |
| Telephone |
| 01582-938342 |
| wanxin.chen@rothamsted.ac.uk |
| Position held |
| Postdoctoral Researcher |
| Full name of the day to day supervisor and/or arrangements for supervision |
| Wanxin Chen and Javier Palma-Guerrero |
| Date of Project Commencement |
| 06/06/2022 |
| Duration (weeks) |
| 10 |
| Brief Description of Project |
| Take-all disease is the most important disease of wheat roots. It is caused by the fungus Gaeumannomyces tritici, that infects wheat roots and damages the vasculature tissue of the plants, therefore affecting water and nutrient uptake. Diseased plants show reduced yield and grain quality. In normal years, the disease causes between 5 to 20% yield losses, but it can be over 50% on years of high disease levels. The damage to the root system can also have a strong environmental impact, by the nitrate leaching from the soil as a result of the reduced crop’s capacity to uptake nitrogen. So far, no genetic resistance to take-all has been found among modern wheat cultivars, and despite the importance of the disease, very little is known about the molecular mechanisms of virulence in the fungus. In this project, the selected student will phenotype adult wheat plants infected by different strains of the take-all fungus to compare the effect of these strains on the adult plant health. Different aboveground and belowground measurements, indicators of plant health, will be taken at the adult stage. In addition, we will perform functional characterization of candidate wheat genes with a potential role in protecting wheat roots from take-all disease by using Virus Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) and Virus Induced Overexpression (VOX). We have recently established this methodology for wheat roots. Candidate wheat genes have been identified by RNAseq during infection by a beneficial fungus that protects wheat roots from take-all disease by activating plant defenses. Plants with the candidate genes transiently silenced by VIGS or transiently overexpressed by VOX will be phenotyped at the seedling stage in presence and absence of take-all to study the role of the genes in the protection against take-all. The roots will be assessed for disease levels and the expression levels of the target genes will be evaluated by RT-qPCR.
Rothamsted Research is one of the longest running agricultural research institutions in the world. It counts with a multidisciplinary environment of scientists covering different expertise and working together with the goal to improve sustainable agriculture production. The student working in this project will learn to perform phenotypic aboveground and belowground measurements on adult wheat plants, VIGS, VOX, root disease assessments at seedling stage, RNA extraction and RT-qPCR. In addition, along the project the student will also learn to do fungal inoculations, work in sterile conditions, microbiology techniques, quantitative disease assessments, microscopy, experimental design, data analysis, results interpretation, presentation skills and report writing for the BSPP Newsletter. |
| Attach the recommended reading for the project |
| Palma-Guerrero et al 2021.Take-All Disease: New Insights into an Important Wheat Root Pathogen. Trends in Plant Science 26 number 8.
Bouton et al 2018. Foxtail mosaic virus: A Viral Vector for Protein Expression in Cereals. Plant Physiology Vol. 177. Lee et al 2015. Virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) for functional analysis of wheat genes involved in Zymoseptoria tritici susceptibility and resistance. Fungal Genetics and Biology 79. Bennypaul et al 2012. Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) of genes expressed in root, leaf, and meiotic tissues of wheat. Funct Integr Genomics 12:143–156. |
