Andrea Restrepo

Sugar fluxes in rice leaves infected by the bacterial blight bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae

Plants are highly efficient in pathogen defense, however, defense is costly. Therefore, pathogens cause massive yield losses in crops. Pathogens infect plants primarily in order to gain access to the host as a source of nutrients required for reproduction. Plants thus balance growth and pathogen defense and likely limit access for pathogen to nutrient resources while fueling defense. In the case of the important bacterial blight disease of rice, the xylem pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae injects transcription activator-like effectors (Tale) into the host’s xylem parenchyma to trigger ectopic induction of host SWEET sucrose uniporter genes. The virulence of Xoo depends on access to the sucrose that is released through this mechanism from the xylem parenchyma (XP)^4–6. Since the xylem does not produce sucrose and is not involved in long distance sucrose translocation, a key question is which the exact source of the sucrose that is secreted during infection is coming from. Notably, glucose transporting SWEETs do not support virulence, indicating that glucose availability is limiting. The key questions that I’m going to work on my PhD are therefore: (i) is the induction of SWEETs restricted to the xylem parenchyma, or can TALe move through plasmodesmata (PD) to adjacent cells in the phloem; (ii) is sucrose transported via plasmodesmata (PD) or specific SWEETs to the XP and (iii) is sucrose synthesized locally.

Starting date: 01.10.2022 / Qualification Fellow

Thesis committee members: Wolf Frommer, tba

Publications:

Erika Corrales-Cabra; Andrea Restrepo; Mónica Higuita Valencia; Yuliana Gallo García; Mauricio Marín Montoya; Pablo Gutiérrez Sánchez (2021) Natural infection of cape gooseberry (Physalisperuviana) by the potyvirus tamarillo leaf malformation virus (TaLMV). Acta Virologica. DOI: 10.4149/av_2022_211

Daniela Cardona; Andrea Restrepo; Mónica Higuita; Yuliana Gallo; Mauricio Marin; Pablo Gutiérrez (2022) Natural infection of purple passion fruit (Passiflora edulis f. edulis) by a novel member of the family Tymoviridae in Colombia. Acta virológica. DOI: 10.4149/av_2022_310

Pablo Gutiérrez; Ary Rivillas; Daniel Tejada; Susana Giraldo; Andrea Restrepo; María Ospina; Susana Cadavid; Yuliana Gallo; Mauricio Marín (2021) PVDP: A portable open source pipeline for detection of plant viruses in RNAseq data. A case study on potato viruses in Antioquia (Colombia). Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology. DOI: 10.1016/j.pmpp.2021.101604