ABSTRACT: Integrating quantitative morphological and qualitative
molecular methods to analyze soil nematode community
responses to plant range expansion
Project description:Mounting evidence suggests that helminthic infection can protect against disorders of immune dysregulation. Administration of live parasites or their excretory/secretory products (ES) has shown therapeutic effects across a wide range of animal models for immune disorders including asthma. Human clinical trials of live parasite ingestion for the treatment of immune disorders have produced promising results, yet concerns persist regarding ingestion of pathogenic organisms and unpredictable immune responses towards their protein components. Despite extensive efforts toward defining active components of ES, no small molecules with immune regulatory activity have been identified from nematodes. OBJECTIVE: Here we have aimed to identify the effect of evolutionarily conserved family of nematode pheromones called ascaroside, which is a small molecule produced by several animal parasitic nematode species, on pulmonary immune response and asthma severity in mice.
Project description:Bio-electrospray, the direct jet-based cell handling apporach, is able to handle a wide range of cells. Studies at the genomic, genetic, and the physiological level have shown that, post-treatment, cellular integrity is unperturbed and a high percentage (>70%, compared to control) of cells remain viable. Although, these results are impressive, it may be argued that cell based systems are oversimplistic. This study utilizing a well characterised multicellular model organism, the non-parasitic nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Nematodes were subjected to bio-electrosprays to demonstrate that bio-electrosprays can be safely applied to nematodes.
Project description:Using pine wood nematode resistant Pinus massoniana clones as materials, after inoculation with pine wood nematode, needles from 5 locations of the same plant were collected and mixed as a biological replicate at 0d,3d and 10d, and a total of two biological replicates were performed for proteomics analysis based on TMT tags.
Project description:There is mounting evidence for the role of epigenetic processes in the regulation of plant responses to a wide range of external stimuli. Despite their importance, the significance of epigenetic processes in plant-pathogen interactions remain poorly understood. So far, the role of histone modifications has not been investigated at genome wide level in plant-nematode interactions, although their expression levels are altered in nematode-induced galls. In this study, we first applied chemical inhibitors of histone modifying enzymes on rice plants. Despite theirdistinct effects on histone modifications, application of different concentrations of Niconinamide, sulfamethazine and fumaric acid lead to reduced susceptibility to nematode infection. Similarly, two overexpression lines of histone lysine methyltransferases and one histone deacetylase were analyzed in an infection assay with nematodes, showing contrasting results in susceptibility. These data indicate that histone modifications can affect plant defence against nematodes in rice. To further investigate their effect, the genome-wide level of three histone marks namely H3K9ac, H3K9me2 and H3K27me3 was studied by chromatin-immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-sequencing on nematode-induced galls in comparison with control root tips.
