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(A) Quantitative analysis of gene expression in plants and plant pathogenic fungi during development and disease

Reference	JE412645
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Chris Leaver
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Malcolm Campbell, Professor Sarah Gurr, Professor Marc Knight, Professor Pietro Spanu
Institution	University of Oxford
Department	Plant Sciences
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	25,848
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	27/03/2000
End date	27/09/2000
Duration	6 months

Abstract

An accurate and quantitative determination of gene expression is required to understand fundamental processes in plant and fungal development, pathogenesis and response to environmental abiotic stress. The analytical methods used to date suffer from a series of draw-backs: they need relatively large quantities of starting materials and/or are inherently non-quantitative. The LightCycler promises to eliminate these limitations by combining the sensitivity of PCR-based approaches with quantitative monitoring of real- time dynamics of the amplification process. We propose here to exploit this new technology to assay RNA levels in plants, fungi and plant-fungus interactions. In plants we will focus on: 1) determining transcriptional activity of genes involved in xylogenesis (wood formation) in wild type, mutant and transgenic poplar, flax and Arabidopsis; 2) genes involved in programmed cell death during senescence of cucumber cotyledons; 3) unravelling signalling pathways which control the responses to abiotic stress in Arabidopsis by analysing levels of stress-related genes. In fungi we plan to measure: 1) the expression of stage-specific genes in obligate biotrophic fungal pathogens (e.g. Erysiphe graminis); 2) the expression during growth in vitro and in planta of each of the six members of the hydrophobin gene family of Cladosporium fulvum; 3) the levels of gene specific sense and antisense RNA in strains of C. fulvum which exhibit co- suppression of selected genes.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Joint Equipment Initiative 1999 (JE4) [1999]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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