Publications by authors named "Gruden K"

Article Synopsis
  • Plants face attacks from pathogens that use effectors like necrosis- and ethylene-inducing peptide-1-like proteins (NLPs) to invade and damage them.
  • NLPs, known for causing cell death and tissue damage, disrupt the plant's plasma membrane through unique mechanisms that create small, temporary membrane ruptures.
  • Recent research utilized confocal fluorescence microscopy to analyze how NLP interacts with model plant cell membranes, revealing that NLP's permeabilization effects depend on its concentration and time of exposure, and confirming its binding and structural changes on these membranes.
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Article Synopsis
  • Ethylene response factor StPti5 in potatoes is identified as a susceptibility factor that negatively impacts immunity against pathogens like potato virus Y and Ralstonia solanacearum, which operate through different mechanisms.
  • The study reveals that StPti5 is broken down in healthy plants through autophagy but accumulates in the nucleus during infection, indicating its role in the plant's defense response.
  • It also shows that StPti5 is regulated by the interaction of ethylene and salicylic acid pathways, influencing other ERFs and downregulating the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, contributing to understanding plant immunity regulation.
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Potato () is the most popular tuber crop and a model organism. A variety of gene models for potato exist, and despite frequent updates, they are not unified. This hinders the comparison of gene models across versions, limits the ability to reuse experimental data without significant re-analysis, and leads to missing or wrongly annotated genes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - High throughput image-based phenotyping allows researchers to analyze plant development and performance non-invasively, capturing traits like biomass and photosynthetic efficiency using various imaging sensors.
  • - In a study on potato plants (cv. Lady Rosetta), researchers tested responses to different stress treatments (control, drought, heat, waterlogging, and combinations) to understand how plants react to overlapping environmental challenges.
  • - Results indicated that waterlogging was the most harmful stress, causing rapid physiological changes, while all stresses negatively affected growth and photosynthesis, highlighting the importance of this technology for studying plant resilience to climate change.
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Protein complexes from edible oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus sp.) composed of pleurotolysin A2 (PlyA2) and pleurotolysin B (PlyB) exert toxicity in feeding tests against Colorado potato beetle (CPB) larvae, acting through the interaction with insect-specific membrane sphingolipid. Here we present a new strategy for crop protection, based on in planta production of PlyA2/PlyB protein complexes, and we exemplify this strategy in construction of transgenic potato plants of cv Désirée.

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Stress Knowledge Map (SKM; https://skm.nib.si) is a publicly available resource containing two complementary knowledge graphs that describe the current knowledge of biochemical, signaling, and regulatory molecular interactions in plants: a highly curated model of plant stress signaling (PSS; 543 reactions) and a large comprehensive knowledge network (488 390 interactions).

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Insect physiology and reproduction depend on several terpenoid compounds, whose biosynthesis is mainly unknown. One enigmatic group of insect monoterpenoids are mealybug sex pheromones, presumably resulting from the irregular coupling activity of unidentified isoprenyl diphosphate synthases (IDSs). Here, we performed a comprehensive search for IDS coding sequences of the pest mealybug .

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Background: Geminiviruses are DNA plant viruses that cause highly damaging diseases affecting crops worldwide. During the infection, geminiviruses hijack cellular processes, suppress plant defenses, and cause a massive reprogramming of the infected cells leading to major changes in the whole plant homeostasis. The advances in sequencing technologies allow the simultaneous analysis of multiple aspects of viral infection at a large scale, generating new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying plant-virus interactions.

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The nutritional value of wheat grains, particularly their protein and metabolite composition, is a result of the grain-filling process, especially in the endosperm. Here, we employ laser microdissection (LMD) combined with shotgun proteomics and metabolomics to generate a cell type-specific proteome and metabolome inventory of developing wheat endosperm at the early (15 DAA) and late (26 DAA) grain-filling stages. We identified 1803 proteins and 41 metabolites from four different cell types (aleurone (AL), sub-aleurone (SA), starchy endosperm (SE) and endosperm transfer cells (ETCs).

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Hypersensitive response (HR)-conferred resistance is an effective defense response that can be determined by the N resistance genes. HR is manifested as the formation of cell death zones on inoculated leaves. Here, a protocol for studying the rate of cell death initiation by imaging inoculated leaves in the time between the cell death initiation and the cell death appearance using a digital microscope is presented.

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The pathogenicity of intracellular plant pathogenic bacteria is associated with the action of pathogenicity factors/effectors, but their physiological roles for most phytoplasma species, including ' Phytoplasma solani' are unknown. Six putative pathogenicity factors/effectors from six different strains of '. P.

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In this white paper, we describe the founding of a new ELIXIR Community - the Systems Biology Community - and its proposed future contributions to both ELIXIR and the broader community of systems biologists in Europe and worldwide. The Community believes that the infrastructure aspects of systems biology - databases, (modelling) tools and standards development, as well as training and access to cloud infrastructure - are not only appropriate components of the ELIXIR infrastructure, but will prove key components of ELIXIR's future support of advanced biological applications and personalised medicine. By way of a series of meetings, the Community identified seven key areas for its future activities, reflecting both future needs and previous and current activities within ELIXIR Platforms and Communities.

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TGA (TGACG-binding) transcription factors, which bind their target DNA through a conserved basic region leucine zipper (bZIP) domain, are vital regulators of gene expression in salicylic acid (SA)-mediated plant immunity. Here, we investigated the role of StTGA2.1, a potato (Solanum tuberosum) TGA lacking the full bZIP, which we named a mini-TGA.

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Plant biofactories are a promising platform for sustainable production of high-value compounds, among which are insect sex pheromones, a green alternative to conventional insecticides in agriculture. Recently, we have constructed transgenic plants ("Sexy Plants", SxP) that successfully produce a blend of moth (Lepidoptera) sex pheromone compounds ()-11-hexadecen-1-ol and ()-11-hexadecenyl acetate. However, efficient biosynthesis of sex pheromones resulted in growth and developmental penalty, diminishing the potential for commercial use of SxP in biomanufacturing.

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We developed pISA-tree, a straightforward and flexible data management solution for organisation of life science project-associated research data and metadata. pISA-tree was initiated by end-user requirements thus its strong points are practicality and low maintenance cost. It enables on-the-fly creation of enriched directory tree structure (project/Investigation/Study/Assay) based on the ISA model, in a standardised manner via consecutive batch files.

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Phytohormones are major signaling components that contribute to nearly all aspects of plant life. They constitute an interconnected communication network to fine-tune growth and development in response to the ever-changing environment. To this end, they have to coordinate with other signaling components, such as reactive oxygen species and calcium signals.

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Article Synopsis
  • Advanced machine learning algorithms improve the accuracy of models that analyze gene expression by examining complex relationships in nucleotide sequences and regulatory regions.
  • These models reveal new regulatory features that enhance our understanding of gene regulation mechanisms.
  • The findings suggest new principles that could be explored and applied in plant science research.
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MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs, which modulate the abundance and spatiotemporal accumulation of target mRNAs at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels and through that play important roles in several biological processes in plants. Here we show that in polyploid species, CRISPR/Cas9 system can be used for fine-tuning of miRNA expression, which can have broader range of applications compared to knock-out mutants. We established the complete pipeline for CRISPR-Cas9-mediated modulation of miRNA expression in potato.

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TGA transcription factors are essential regulators of various cellular processes, their activity connected to different hormonal pathways, interacting proteins and regulatory elements. Belonging to the basic region leucine zipper (bZIP) family, TGAs operate by binding to their target DNA sequence as dimers through a conserved bZIP domain. Despite sharing the core DNA-binding sequence, the TGA paralogues exert somewhat different DNA-binding preferences.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how chloroplast reactive oxygen species and salicylic acid (SA) signaling relate to the hypersensitive response (HR) in plants, particularly in resisting potato virus Y (PVY) in a resistant potato genotype.
  • - Researchers found that while chloroplast redox changes near cell death zones signal resistance, fewer oxidized chloroplasts appeared in SA-deficient plants, suggesting a crucial role for SA in resistance signaling.
  • - The analysis also revealed that stromules (extensions of chloroplasts) are induced by cell death and PVY multiplication, but this response is significantly reduced in plants lacking SA.
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The use of more salt stress-tolerant vine rootstocks can be a sustainable strategy for adapting traditional grapevine cultivars to future conditions. However, how the new M1 and M4 rootstocks perform against salinity compared to conventional ones, such as the 1103-Paulsen, had not been previously assessed under real field conditions. Therefore, a field trial was carried out in a young 'Tempranillo' ( L.

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PaintOmics is a web server for the integrative analysis and visualisation of multi-omics datasets using biological pathway maps. PaintOmics 4 has several notable updates that improve and extend analyses. Three pathway databases are now supported: KEGG, Reactome and MapMan, providing more comprehensive pathway knowledge for animals and plants.

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The role of programmed cell death (PCD) in hypersensitive response (HR)-conferred resistance depends on the type of host-pathogen interaction and therefore has to be studied for each individual pathosystem. Here we present and explain the protocol for studying the role of PCD in HR-conferred resistance in potato plants in the interaction with the viral pathogen. As an experimental system, we use genotype Rywal, where the virus spread is restricted and HR PCD develops 3 days post potato virus Y (PVY) inoculation.

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Indole is produced in nature by diverse organisms and exhibits a characteristic odor described as animal, fecal, and floral. In addition, it contributes to the flavor in foods, and it is applied in the fragrance and flavor industry. In nature, indole is synthesized either from tryptophan by bacterial tryptophanases (TNAs) or from indole-3-glycerol phosphate (IGP) by plant indole-3-glycerol phosphate lyases (IGLs).

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