Leveraging Genomics Resources and Wild Species of Tomato to Identify New Sources of Disease Resistance

PI: Alan Collmer (Cornell University)

CoPIs: Zhangjun Fei, Gregory Martin, and Sorina Popescu (Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research), Bryant Adams (Wells College), Magdalen Lindeberg (Cornell University) and Dilip Panthee (North Carolina State University Mountain Horticultural Research & Extension Center)

This project is aimed at improving disease resistance in tomato by understanding and manipulating the complex network of protein kinases involved in pathogen perception and defense activation. The immunity-associated kinase system will be probed with two classes of molecules from the model bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000: elicitors of immunity perceived by kinases at the surface of plant cells, and effectors injected by the pathogen into plant cells to disrupt kinase signaling and thereby suppress immunity. The project exploits genomic resources for tomato and the pathogen, as well as natural variation in the immunity of wild tomato species. A variety of approaches will be used to comprehensively identify and biochemically explore immunity-associated kinases. These include RNA sequencing-based transcriptomic analyses (to identify kinase genes upregulated by pathogen elicitors) and functional protein microarrays (to identify kinases that interact with pathogen molecules). The project will reveal whether the kinases that perceive extracellular pathogen signals or those that function internally to activate defenses are more important in naturally occurring superior resistance. This information will guide strategies for improving tomato resistance to bacterial speck and possibly other diseases. Expected outcomes include fundamental insights into the operation of the immunity-associated kinase system in plants, new tomato breeding lines with improved disease resistance, and an outreach activity involving a game based on molecular plant-pathogen interactions.

Crop plants are susceptible to bacteria and many other microbial pathogens, and the resulting diseases are often difficult to control. Broader impacts of this project include new approaches to disease resistance that may be applicable to many crops and pathogen classes. Additional broader impacts include several outreach activities, most notably, development of an educational video game. Growing knowledge of the 'game-like' molecular interactions between plants and pathogens will be used to guide development of a game that will engage students and possibly the broader public in lessons addressing evolution, plant biology, pathogenesis, and agriculture. This will be a strategy/resource game incorporating the costs and benefits of deploying attack and defense molecules. The game will be based on the widely available Adobe Flash platform. In addition, the project will continue to refine and support the High School Connect laboratory modules that are distributed through the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers. The Pseudomonas-Plant Interaction website (http://pseudomonas-syringae.org), which is interlinked with the Sol Genomics Network (http://solgenomics.net) and the Tomato Functional Genomics Database (http://ted.bti.cornell.edu), will provide public access to all project generated data and biological resources, as well as to the game and other outreach resources.