Student research opportunities
Investigating a plant cell’s ability to detect physical pressure
Project Code: CECS_635
This project is available at the following levels:
Engn4200
Please note that this project is only for undergraduate students.
Supervisor:
Jodie BradbyOutline:
Plants, like animals, possess an innate immune system that effectively protects them against invasion by most potential pathogens. On a basic level in order to infect a cell the pathogen must mechanically penetrate the cell wall. Recent advances have allowed the response of living cells to mechanical stimulus to be studied using Arabidopsis plants that were expression proteins tagged with the green fluorescent protein (GFP). These experiments thus suggest that plant cells are able to detect mechanical stimuli exerted by invading hyphae and can use these signals to induce the basal defence response. It thus seems feasible that plants could be responding to mechanical stimulation as the pathogen attempts to penetrate the plant cell wall but there is little, if any, quantitative assessment of the sensitivity of the detection system.
The aim of the project is to investigate the magnitude of the applied force that elicits reorganisation of the GFP-tagged subcellular components in the Arabidopsis leaves. A number of studies have measured the force pathogen hyphae can exert on their surroundings and values in the range of 5-100 µN have been obtained. Such loads can be generated experimentally using the ANU Hysitron nanoindentation and the response of the cells examined using a fluorescent microscope.
Student Gain
Dr Jodie and Prof Adrienne Hardham
