Innes and Bauer projects funded by new NSF-USDA joint program on plant biotic interactions: 2017 News: News: News & Events: Department of Biology: Indiana University Bloomington

Innes and Bauer projects funded by new NSF-USDA joint program on plant biotic interactions

Monday, July 24, 2017

Root growth. The plant on the right with more roots was inoculated with Azospirillum brasilense while the plant on the left was not inoculated. — Bauer lab: Bacterium Azospirillum brasilense stimulated root growth in plant on right.

The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture have issued research project awards to Roger Innes, professor of biology, and Carl Bauer, professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry and adjunct professor of biology. The awards were made through the Plant Biotic Interactions program jointly administered by the NSF Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and NIFA. These awards are granted to support research into the relationships between plants, microbes, and other organisms in their environment.

"It allows creative investigators to combine basic science questions with applied uses of the results in one proposal." said James Olds, NSF assistant director for Biological Sciences. He noted that this will translate into improving crop outcomes.

Organisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates have relationships with plants that can range from mutually beneficial symbiosis, to pathogenesis, to parasitism that harms host plants. The PBI program focuses on uncovering the processes that allow for, promote, or control these relationships.

For agriculture, a beneficial relationship between plants and other organisms can save farmers resources and money, but a harmful relationship can result in expensive crop loss or inefficiencies. Only by studying the interactions in model plants and economically important plants will it be possible to effectively utilize the advantages these relationships offer or eliminate their detrimental effects.

Innes will investigate the role of extracellular vesicles in plant-pathogen interactions. EVs are microscopic spherical packages that can carry information from one cell to another within an organism. Recent work in animal systems—including humans—has revealed that this information can reprogram recipient cells so that the receiving cell changes the proteins it produces, and hence the properties of the cell, and in some cases, the ability of a cell to prevent infection by a virus. Recent work in the Innes laboratory indicates that EVs may serve a similar role in plants. Innes aims to address basic questions about how plant EVs are produced, what they carry, and how they may contribute to plant immunity. The answers to these questions will facilitate development of disease resistant crops.

Read proposal

Enhancing the establishment of beneficial root/rhizosphere interactions in agriculturally relevant plants is the focus of Bauer’s project. His research is centered on understanding how Azospirillum naturally forms a beneficial interaction with crop roots. The Azospirillum clade constitutes a secondary class of nitrogen fixing plant-growth promoting bacteria that also associate with plant roots. These microorganisms form beneficial interactions with a much wider number of crop plants than do the better known rhizobial species. Bauer will then use the understanding of how Azospirillum interacts with crop roots to develop methodologies that enhance the interaction to promote its practical use in growing crop plants.

Arabidopsis plants from the Innes lab. — *Arabidopsis thaliana*—a mustard plant known as thale cress, mouse-ear cress, or Arabidopsis. Over the last two years, the Innes lab has developed a method for purifying and quantifying EVs from Arabidopsis leaves. Tom Ashfield

Innes instructs IU’s Holland summer science program (https://go.iu.edu/holland) participants on how plant scientists transiently express genes in Nicotiana benthamiana, a tobacco relative. — Innes will provide hands-on plant science activities for students, with a special focus on underrepresented minorities, with his project. In this photo, Innes instructs IU’s Holland summer science program participants on how plant scientists transiently express genes in *Nicotiana benthamiana*, a tobacco relative. Terri Greene, IU Biology

Innes and Bauer projects funded by new NSF-USDA joint program on plant biotic interactions

Department of Biology social media channels

The College of Arts & Sciences