To study the signaling role of nitric oxide in resistance against pathogen infection in different varieties of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum).
Student name: Ms Apoorva Teotia
Guide: Dr Shashi Bhushan Tripathi
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Jagadis Gupta Kapuganti
Abstract: Plants aim to survive and thrive in adverse conditions of abiotic and biotic stress. This further leads to adopting various mechanisms to deal with such unfavourable conditions. Activation of plant defence mechanism following plant pathogen interaction involves complex signaling net-works with signal amplification and crosstalk. Nitric Oxide (NO), a gaseous hormone, plays an important role as a signaling component in plant defence responses against biotic stress. Previous studies signifies that nitric oxide (NO) participates in different pathogen related physiological processes in plants. Various functions of NO include the regulation of hormonal, wounding and cell death responses. Infiltration with avirulent Pseudomonas syringe DC 3000 was employed as an approach to elucidate signaling during pathogen resistance in different varieties of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). The result of different parameters that have been taken into consideration to analyse signaling in plant pathogen interactions and whether different varieties of Tomato show resistant or susceptible nature in response to stress are discussed here. From the physiological and molecular screening it is identified that plant pathogen interaction which further generate Effector triggered immunity (ETI) - a type of immune response, is often accompanied by the hypersensitive response (HR) at the infection site, involving programmed cell death (PCD), a product of complex NO signaling. Subsequently, such type of local immune signaling at infection sites leads systemic acquired resistance (SAR) against P. syringae throughout the plant, which also in turn involves various other signaling components such as NO, Salicylic acid (SA). These responses involving complex signaling cascade help the plants to become resistant to the surrounding biotic stress and survive.
Keywords: Biotic stress, Nitric oxide (NO), Plant pathogen interaction, Hypersensitive response (HR), Resistance
