Study of the role of Snakin/GASA genes in Solanum tuberosum and Arabidopsis

VAZQUEZ- ROVERE, C

Barcelona

Seminario; Ciclo de Seminarios CRAG; 2016

Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics

Snakin/GASA peptides are widely distributed among plant species and all of them maintain 12 cysteines of the C-terminus in highly conserved positions. Even though they have been involved in different biological functions, they are not fully elucidated and little is known about their mode of action. In potato, this family consists of 18 members and we found that expression of Snakin-1, Snakin-2 and Snakin-3 (one member of each subfamily) is affected by bacterial and/or fungal inoculation. Moreover, we demonstrated that overexpression of Snakin-1 enhanced fungi and bacteria resistance in potato transgenic lines. Interestingly, we showed that Snakin-1 silencing affected cell division, leaf primary metabolism and cell wall composition demonstrating that it has additional roles in growth and development. In order to gain more insights into the molecular mechanism underlying the role of these genes, analyses of Snakin-1 transgenic and WT transcriptomes were further performed and reactive oxygen species accumulation and endogenous levels of plant hormones were determined. Our results suggested the involvement of Snakin-1 in redox homeostasis and hormonal crosstalk. Preliminary results of phenotypic studies of Arabidopsis GASA genes in different environmental conditions using the automated platform PHENOPSIS will be also presented.