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Publications - Cell and Metabolic Biology
Publications
Plants have developed a robust transcription machinery to combat potential pathogenic organisms. One of the hallmarks of early immune responses is the activation of the WRKY transcription factors post infection. Specific WRKYs proteins from Arabidopsis are known substrates of MAPK pathway to mediate the flg22 elicited early immunity. In the current study, using the Golden Gate cloning strategy, we aim to clone the entire WRKY transcription factor family from Oryza sativa ssp. indica consisting of more than 100 members and study their MAPK interaction and subsequent role in PTI. Using a reporter LUC assay in protoplasts we investigated the early defense responses in a few interesting OsWRKY candidates. Interestingly, we observed stringent regulation of WRKY expression in cells and their transcriptional expression only under specific stress responses. The phenomenon of gene expression regulation by intron retention (IR) was prevalently observed in rice WRKY transcripts. We could show the role of WRKY8, 24, and 77 in early defense responses. It was observed that WRKY24 enhanced the expression of early defense response marker genes like NHL10 while WRKY8 and WRKY77 supressed their expression. This study highlights the complicated mechanism by which OsWRKYs expression is possibly regulated and the distinctive roles of some individual members in plant immunity. At the same time this study serves as a cautionary warning for plant researchers to be mindful of the intron retention mechanism while cloning OsWRKYs.
Publications
The profile of 122 metabolites in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and controls was studied. Among the 122 metabolites analyzed, 61 could be detected. Statistically significant differences between the AD and control group were only detected for metabolites of the glycolysis. Thus, accurate quantification of 11 glycolytic metabolites was done. We detected a significant reduction of five of them, namely phosphoenolpyruvate, 2-phosphoglycerate, 3-phosphoglycerate, pyruvate and dihydroxyacetone phosphate in the AD CSF compared to controls. These results correlate with the known reduction of glucose metabolism in the brain of patients with AD and indicate that metabolic analysis of the central carbon metabolism can be a potential tool in AD diagnostic. Although the Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses of the metabolites do not reach the level of the diagnostic informativity of AD biomarkers, the combination of specific glycolysis metabolites with the established biomarkers may lead to an improvement in sensitivity and specificity.
Publications
The induction of chitinase (CAChi2) mRNA started as early as 6 h after inoculation and gradually increased in the incompatible interaction of pepper stems with Phytophthora capsici. In the compatible interaction, the induction of the chitinase transcripts was detected later than that in the incompatible interaction. The CAChi2 mRNA was usually localized in the vascular tissues and their expression was constricted in the phloem-related cells. These results showed that the spatial pattern of CAChi2 mRNA expression was similar in both compatible and incompatible interactions but the temporal patterns were different from each other. In addition, the early induction ofCAChi2 mRNA was quite distinct in the incompatible interaction. Immunogold labelling data showed specific labelling of chitinase on the cell wall of the oomycete in both compatible and incompatible interactions at 24 h after inoculation. In particular, numerous gold particles were deposited on the cell wall of P. capsici with a predominant accumulation over areas showing signs of degradation in the incompatible interaction. Chitinase labelling was also detected in the intercellular space and the host cytoplasm. However, healthy pepper stem tissue was nearly free of labelling.
This page was last modified on 27 Jan 2025 .
