Project description:Leaf-cutting ants of the genera Acromyrmex and Atta live in mutualistic symbiosis with a basidiomycete fungus (Leucocoprinus gongylophorus), which they cultivate as fungal gardens in underground nest chambers. The ants provide the fungus with a growth substrate consisting of freshly cut leaf fragments. After new leaf fragments are brought into the nest, the ants chew them into smaller pieces and apply droplets of fecal fluid to the leaf pulp before depositing this mixed substrate in the fungus garden and inoculating it with small tufts of mycelium from older parts of the garden. Previous work has shown that the fecal fluid contains a range of digestive enzymes including proteases, amylases, chitinases, cellulases, pectinases, hemicellulases and laccases, and that most of these enzymes are produced by the fungal symbiont in specialized structures called gongylidia that the ants eat. After ingestion, the enzymes apparently pass unharmed through the alimentary channel of the ants and end up in the fecal fluid. Most likely this complex system is an adaptation of the ant-fungus symbiosis to a herbivorous lifestyle, as the ancient ancestors of the ants and the fungus lived as hunter-gatherers and saprotrophs, respectively. The promise of fecal fluid for getting insight into the molecular adaptations that enables the ant-fungus holosymbiont to live as a herbivore, led us to investigate the fecal fluid proteome using LC-MS/MS in order to get a more comprehensive picture of the repertoire of proteins present.
Project description:In order to research the ginseng leaf-stem gene expression profiles of and dig out its function genes in the leaf-expansion period, the transcriptomic sequencing technology was set up the first time for five years the transcription of the Panax ginseng leaf-stem in the leaf-expansion period.
Project description:Leaves are colonised by a complex mix of microbes, termed the leaf microbiota. Even though the leaf microbiota is increasingly recognised as an integral part of plant life and health, our understanding of its interactions with the plant host is still limited. Here, mature, axenically grown Arabidopsis thaliana plants were spray-inoculated with diverse leaf-colonising bacteria. Whole transcriptome sequencing revealed that four days after inoculation, leaf transcriptional changes to colonisation by non-pathogenic and pathogenic bacteria differed in strength but not in the type of response.