Miss Ronishree Naidoo

MSc Student
Eucalyptus Pine Pathogen Interaction

Research Interests

I became part of the FABI family in 2008 as part of my honours project. The research aspect of my honours project focused on the alteration of gene expression associated with the plant defence response activated during an incompatible reaction. The interaction investigated in this study involved the bacterial pathogen Ralstonia solanaceraum isolate CK and the Arabidopsis thaliana ecotype Killean (Kil-0). Microarray technology in conjunction with SSH screening was utilized to address the research question. Involvement of the cell wall strengthening genes as well as their association with the salicylic acid signalling pathway was revealed in this research.  Differentially expressed genes discovered in this study can be used as candidates for further analysis in natural hosts of this pathogen such as the Eucalyptus species.

 

I am currently completing my MSc: Genetics and this project is also aimed at enhancing the defence system of Eucalyptus. However the focus of this project is to elucidate the signalling pathways which are well understood in A. thaliana. However in order for one to enhance the defence in Eucalyptus against various pathogens, these pathways need to be elucidated in this valuable tree. In A. thaliana there exists well characterized marker genes for the different signalling pathways and a step in revealing these pathways in Eucalyptus would be to uncover the various marker genes. This can be done using the Eucalyptus genome sequence which is currently available, in conjunction with the transcriptome data and the A. thaliana data. Once identified, the expression of these marker genes were profiled under various concentrations of these hormones and the change in expression over a period of time was investigated. To test the hypothesis that these marker genes can be diagnostic to pathogen invasion, the putative genes were analyzed in tress infected with the fungal pathogen Chrysoporthe austroafricana.