Anna-Maria Botha
Stellenbosch University,South Africa
Title: Studying host-insect interactions using viral induced gene silencing and siRNA
Biography
Biography: Anna-Maria Botha
Abstract
Wheat Dn genes afford resistance to the economically important pest, Diuraphis noxia (Kurdjumov, Russian wheat aphid, RWA) and have been the topic of transcriptomic and proteomic studies aimed at unravelling the pathways involved in resistance. However, despite numerous efforts to isolate these Dn genes, none of them had been cloned and sequenced and this can partly be ascribed to the complexity and size of the bread wheat genome, as well as the apparent centromeric location of these genes. To date, several R-gene targets were investigated using viral induced gene silencing (VIGs) in wheat. However, the availability of the complete genome of the pest has opened up new avenues of study to unravel the complex interaction between these organisms.The current study explores both avenues. Candidate plant resistance genes were silenced in planta and aphid response assessed, while candidate aphid effectors were also delivered in planta to assess their respective functions during host-pest interactions. In all cases, the aphids were allowed to feed, where after reproduction was recorded. The ectopic expression of the gene targets was also quantified using RT-PCR analysis.