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Project properties |
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| Title | Effectors controlling arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis |
| Group | Molecular Biology, Laboratory of |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 12-39 |
| Supervisor(s) | Dr ir E Limpens
Peng Wang |
| Examiner(s) | Prof dr T Bisseling |
| Contact info | erik.limpens@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2018/11/01 |
| End date | 2021/01/01 |
| Description | Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi establish a symbiosis with the vast majority of all land plants. The fungi colonize plant roots, where they are hosted inside root cortex cells forming highly branched fungal structures called arbuscules. Here, the fungi deliver minerals from the soil (especially phosphate and fixed nitrogen) to the plant, for which they get sugars and lipids in return.
It has recently become clear that, in analogy to pathogenic fungi, mutualistic AM fungi secrete effector proteins that may affect the host immune system or help to reprogram cells to host the fungus and exchange nutrients. By using cell-specific transcriptome analyses we have identified a range of putative effectors at different stages of the interaction. A key question is what role these effectors play in the symbiosis. Therefore, we use a range of different molecular techniques to study the role of AM effectors in the symbiosis. |
| Used skills | A selection of techniques that are used:
- Laser microdissection - Purification of effectors using E. coli expression systems - Golden Gate and Gateway cloning to create fluorescent/tagged proteins, overexpression, promoter-GUS, and RNAi constructs - Hairy root transformation - Defense assays - qRT-PCR, RNAseq, in situ hybridisation - Immunolocalisation of proteins in intact roots (Immunocytochemistry) - Localisation of fluorescent proteins using Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy |
| Requirements | For BSc thesis: MOB20306
For MSc thesis: MOB20306 and and MOB30306 or MOB31303 or MOB30806 or PHP30806 or equivalent |