Perception and Signalling by Bacteria and Bacterial Microbe-Associated Molecular Patterns (MAMPs) in Plants and Fungi

Animals, plants and fungi belong to different kingdoms, but all three types of organisms have many potential bacterial pathogens. The overlap between these pathogens with their animal and plant hosts has only recently begun to attract attention, while the interaction of bacterial pathogens and their fungal hosts is even less explored. How is disease caused and how are pathogens perceived by their hosts?.

 

Figure 1. A. Perception and signaling pathways downstream of PRRs in mammals, insects, nematodes and plants. Plants have a family of receptor like kinases such as the flagellin receptor FLS2 (Ausubel, 2005). B. The plant receptor(s) for LPS is still un-indentified as is the innate immunity in fungi.

 

We aim to characterize recognition events and the following signalling in plants and fungi in response to bacterial pathogens and bacterially derived microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs). The project will be based on previous discoveries by us and others (a) that MAMPs such as bacterial flagellin (flg), elongation factor Tu (Ef-Tu), lipopolysaccharides (LPS) and peptidoglycan (PGN) activates innate immunity in plants (b) that some bacteria colonize fungal hosts and induce defence responses in the fungus. These results will allow us to take parallel approaches in order to identify MAMP receptors and the subsequent signalling in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and in the pathogenic fungus Fusarium graminearum.

 

This project is funded by The Villum Foundation, Denmark.