Project description:Upon exposure to unfavorable environmental conditions, plants need to respond quickly to maintain their homeostasis. For instance, physiological, biochemical and transcriptional changes occur during plant-pathogen interaction. In the case of Vanilla planifolia Jacks., a worldwide economically important crop, it is susceptible to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vanillae. This pathogen causes root and stem rot in vanilla plants that lead to plant death. To investigate how vanilla plants, respond at the transcriptional level upon infection with F. oxysporum f. sp. vanillae, here we employed the RNA-Seq approach to analyze the dynamics of whole-transcriptome changes during two-time frames of the infection. Analysis of global gene expression profiles indicated that the major transcriptional change occurred at 2 dpi, in comparison to 10 dpi. Whereas 3420 genes were found with a differential expression at 2 dpi, only 839 were identified at 10 dpi. The analysis of the transcriptional profile at 2 dpi suggests that, among other responses, vanilla plants prepare to counter the infection by gathering a pool of translational regulation-related transcripts. The screening of transcriptional changes of V. planifolia Jacks upon infection by F. oxysporum f. sp. vanillae provides insights into the plant molecular response, particularly the upregulation of ribosomal proteins at early stages. Thus, we propose that the plant-pathogen interaction between V. planifolia Jacks and F. oxysporum f. sp. vanillae causes a transcriptional reprogramming coupled with a translational regulation. Altogether, this study provides the identification of molecular players that could help to fight the most damaging disease of vanilla.
