Team:Purdue/Human Practices
Dr. Chenglin Yao
In the early planning process, we talked to Dr. Chenglin Yao, a senior plant pathologist at Corteva Agriscience. We talked with Dr. Yao about our initial early project plan while having short discussion on some long-term factors to consider with further development.
Corteva has developed several technologies on crop protection from rice blast fungus that are based upon targeting systemic acquired resistance (SAR) in plants. Systemic acquired resistance is a general immune response in plants, analogous to innate immunity in humans. Dr. Yao informed us that while the PAMP triggered immunity response is at least more specific than SAR response, it’s not guaranteed to necessarily be super specific.
After considering engineering bacteria to produce chitin with some literature research, Dr. Yao informed us to look up the chemical structure of fungal chitin. Some variations exist in the specific chitin structures in different fungal pathogens, he advised us to make sure such variations wouldn’t affect our technology’s ability to target PTI. On the other hand, an immune response based on PTI elicited by chitin may not be specific to just M. oryzae, and thus our technology may be able to be applied to other pathogens. The main benefit on that could potentially be an expansion of consumer base of any potential product developed around it.
Dr. Yao provided some insight about potential things during further development of the project’s technology, USDA approval of transgenic organisms and transportation of live ones can take a long time. Concerning real-life demonstration, doing tests on the fungus is very difficult to accomplish due to governmental regulation.
In the early planning process, we talked to Dr. Chenglin Yao, a senior plant pathologist at Corteva Agriscience. We talked with Dr. Yao about our initial early project plan while having short discussion on some long-term factors to consider with further development.
Corteva has developed several technologies on crop protection from rice blast fungus that are based upon targeting systemic acquired resistance (SAR) in plants. Systemic acquired resistance is a general immune response in plants, analogous to innate immunity in humans. Dr. Yao informed us that while the PAMP triggered immunity response is at least more specific than SAR response, it’s not guaranteed to necessarily be super specific.
After considering engineering bacteria to produce chitin with some literature research, Dr. Yao informed us to look up the chemical structure of fungal chitin. Some variations exist in the specific chitin structures in different fungal pathogens, he advised us to make sure such variations wouldn’t affect our technology’s ability to target PTI. On the other hand, an immune response based on PTI elicited by chitin may not be specific to just M. oryzae, and thus our technology may be able to be applied to other pathogens. The main benefit on that could potentially be an expansion of consumer base of any potential product developed around it.
Dr. Yao provided some insight about potential things during further development of the project’s technology, USDA approval of transgenic organisms and transportation of live ones can take a long time. Concerning real-life demonstration, doing tests on the fungus is very difficult to accomplish due to governmental regulation.
Dr. Morris Levy
Later in the summer, we met with Dr. Morris Levy, a professor in Purdue Biological Sciences Department. Much of Dr. Levy’s research on M. oryzae was on evolutionary genetics and the coevolution of the plant-pathogen systems. He provided us with the information he learned about the pathogen during his research and traits of the fungus.
He emphasized on the cost of resistance, or as he put it, “no free lunch”, which was something that one of the graduate students in Verma’s Lab pointed out to us in one of our meetings with our faculty advisors, but Dr. Levy emphasized it a lot during our interview with him. Activating a plant’s immune response stunts overall plant growth, so even if our technology is able to spare crops from disease damage, it may hurt the growth of the plant overall. He said making sure to account for the situation would be very important to make sure our technology doesn’t harm the plants too much.
He talked about this to make a point that M. oryzae doesn’t necessarily distinguish what surface it’s on until it has started creating appressorias, so it wouldn’t just specifically affect only rice plants. In respect to specifically rice plants, he told us M. oryzae doesn’t just attach to leaves, it can also attach to the necks of the plants, and he said that blast infections on necks are far more deadly to crop yield than blast infections to leaves.
Later in the summer, we met with Dr. Morris Levy, a professor in Purdue Biological Sciences Department. Much of Dr. Levy’s research on M. oryzae was on evolutionary genetics and the coevolution of the plant-pathogen systems. He provided us with the information he learned about the pathogen during his research and traits of the fungus.
He emphasized on the cost of resistance, or as he put it, “no free lunch”, which was something that one of the graduate students in Verma’s Lab pointed out to us in one of our meetings with our faculty advisors, but Dr. Levy emphasized it a lot during our interview with him. Activating a plant’s immune response stunts overall plant growth, so even if our technology is able to spare crops from disease damage, it may hurt the growth of the plant overall. He said making sure to account for the situation would be very important to make sure our technology doesn’t harm the plants too much.
He talked about this to make a point that M. oryzae doesn’t necessarily distinguish what surface it’s on until it has started creating appressorias, so it wouldn’t just specifically affect only rice plants. In respect to specifically rice plants, he told us M. oryzae doesn’t just attach to leaves, it can also attach to the necks of the plants, and he said that blast infections on necks are far more deadly to crop yield than blast infections to leaves.
Pablo Vega
Finally, we reached out to graduate student Pablo Vega in the Purdue Agricultural and Biological Engineering department. He works for Dr. Nathan Mosier, and had been doing his own studies on what we had been doing: investigating chitin and how it activates PTI.
For propagating plants for testing, he used Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings and grew them hydroponically in 50 mL falcon tubes containing growth media. He advised us to look into using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as a confirmatory test for the presence of chitin and offered to help us perform tests with our transformed bacteria cultures on these plants.
Finally, we reached out to graduate student Pablo Vega in the Purdue Agricultural and Biological Engineering department. He works for Dr. Nathan Mosier, and had been doing his own studies on what we had been doing: investigating chitin and how it activates PTI.
For propagating plants for testing, he used Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings and grew them hydroponically in 50 mL falcon tubes containing growth media. He advised us to look into using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as a confirmatory test for the presence of chitin and offered to help us perform tests with our transformed bacteria cultures on these plants.
