RIKEN-Cambridge Joint Crop Symbiosis Research Team

Outline

Symbioses are fundamental to life on Earth. The most ancestral association between plants and fungi emerged around 450 mya and is now so widespread among terrestrial plant species that it fundamentally supports global ecosystems, as well as crop productivity and sustainability. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi belong to the Glomeromycotina subphylum, and facilitate plant mineral uptake from the soil in exchange for plant-derived organic carbon. The establishment of functional symbioses relies on the fine-tuned orchestration of signals to achieve coordination of the two interacting organisms. While considerable understanding of plant signalling mechanisms has been gained in recent years, we know near to nothing about fungal signalling components. To close this gap in knowledge, we wish to reciprocally elucidate how the fungus undergoes reprogramming to engage with its host rice.
We will use ‘omics’ approaches to comprehensively characterise transcriptional and translational activities of different functional units of the fungal mycelium in asymbiosis and symbiosis; we also aim to establish a stable transformation protocols to enable functional studies of gene leads. The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae will be used as a genetically tractable, comparative root-fungal system.

Subjects

1. Signalling in plant-fungal interaction
2. Spatial transcriptomics and proteomics
3. Molecular genetics of fungal root invasion
4. Transformation of arbuscular myocrrhizal fungi