National Centre for Biological Sciences’ Post

Transcript

Fungi are diverse, beautiful, and essential for the maintenance of our ecosystem. From the vibrant colors of the wild mushrooms to the tasty toppings on our pizzas, fungi are everywhere. But despite their beauty, they can cause serious problems for health and well-being. Think about mold creeping on a house wall, or even worse, how they devastate our food crops. One such fungus is Fusarium oxy sporum, a soil dwelling species complex that attacks virtually all our crops, causing a devastating disease known as vascular wilt. This disease has a long history of destruction, especially in crops like tomatoes, bananas, melon and chickpea. Back in the 1950s, Fusarium caused a wipeout of the gross Michelle banana variety, where none of the bananas survived. But there was one variety, the Cavendish variety that we know of today that survived that breakout and that was the Panama disease breakout. But. Even now, this Cavendish variety is still not safe from Fusarium's hands. It has a more virulent strain that's come up. There isn't really a solid solution at present. Slash agriculture, where the top layer of the soil is burnt, isn't an option as it disrupts the native microbiome and is highly unsustainable. Moreover, fungi such as Fusarium produce thick wall resilience pores that can survive extreme conditions and stay in the soil for a longer period of time. So what is the solution at NBC's Doctor Amir Redkar and his team are exploring. Benedict as well as biocontrol strategies to fight against a self stating fungal pathogen. What we want to do is that we want to understand what is going on between these Fusarium and banana interaction, Find out what are the tools that Fusarium uses and also what kind of plant proteins do the Fusarium proteins interact with to sort of establish a compatibility with its host. By studying the root microbiome and plant fungal interaction crosstalk, they're trying to understand how to effectively. Manage vascular Wilts. They study root microbial interactions from different perspectives. A lot happens in the root of a plant. The root does not exist by itself, it exists with other bacteria, other fungi. Some of them are beneficial, some of them are harmful, but the plant has to associate with the ones which are beneficial but at the same time keep away from those who could be harmful, such as Fusarium Oxys forum that we work with. Amar describes the root soil interface as a house party. Imagine the plants roots as a house, with each cellular compartment of the root being A room. The vasculature can be considered as the kitchen strictly for members and off limits for the guest and visitors. That is the opportunistic pathogens. But fungi can switch from being the fun guys to becoming harmful pathogens. Pathogens such as Physarum Oxy sporum cross the boundary and crash the kitchen to cause systemic infection through the plant circulatory system. When we talk about fungal toolkit, we are essentially talking about most likely proteins. Which the fungus uses to enter a potential host body. Now you can compare it to for example you have skin which is a defense barrier for your body. Now if any microbe for that matter has to enter your system, it has to breakthrough the outer layers of your body to get inside. Similarly, a fungus also has to do the same thing when it tries to infect the plant. For that to happen it needs proteins or enzymes or workhorses which can actually go ahead and attack the plant body. Those proteins, in our jargon, we would call effector proteins, but they are really very simple molecules which just go ahead, attack and breakdown the plant body as much as they can. Now an interesting phenomena in the field is that there's a very close, close, close cousin of the pathogenic Fusarium, which is actually not pathogenic, which is actually helpful for the plant. Now, how does a plant differentiate between? An incoming fungus as a good fungus and an incoming fungus is a bad fungus. How does that recognition happen, especially when they are so similar? The root soil interface is an incredibly complex system, hidden underground and out of sight from our naked eyes. So how does Amir and his team study this intricate environment? It's impossible to pluck a plant out of the soil and study the interactions with the microbes on a day-to-day basis. Hence we are developing a soil free gel based system that's transparent. Now this transparent gel allows us to study the interactions between the microbes and the roots and this gives us a deeper understanding of the interactions between the pathogen and the host, understanding these evolving root microbial ecosystems and the relationships between. Fungi and plants is crucial to developing new control strategies to prevent these emerging fungal diseases like vascular Wilts.