Effects of PHENYLALANINE AMMONIA LYASE (PAL) knockdown on cell wall composition, biomass digestibility, and biotic and abiotic stress responses in Brachypodium.

The phenylpropanoid pathway in plants synthesizes a variety of structural and defence compounds, and is an important target in efforts to reduce cell wall lignin for improved biomass conversion to biofuels. Little is known concerning the trade-offs in grasses when perturbing the function of the first gene family in the pathway, PHENYLALANINE AMMONIA LYASE (PAL). Therefore, PAL isoforms in the model grass Brachypodium distachyon were targeted, by RNA interference (RNAi), and large reductions (up to 85%) in stem tissue transcript abundance for two of the eight putative BdPAL genes were identified.

T-DNA mutagenesis in Brachypodium distachyon.

During the past decade, Brachypodium distachyon has emerged as an attractive experimental system and genomics model for grass research. Numerous molecular tools and genomics resources have already been developed. Functional genomics resources, including mutant collections, expression/tiling microarray, mapping populations, and genome re-sequencing for natural accessions, are rapidly being developed and made available to the community.

Brachypodium distachyon: a new pathosystem to study Fusarium head blight and other Fusarium diseases of wheat.

Background: Fusarium species cause Fusarium head blight (FHB) and other important diseases of cereals. The causal agents produce trichothecene mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON). The dicotyledonous model species Arabidopsis thaliana has been used to study Fusarium-host interactions but it is not ideal for model-to-crop translation.