Root knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) are polyphagous pests for many agricultural crops and are need to be controlled. Pasteuria penetrans is an obligate bacterial parasite of root-knot nematodes and endospores of the bacterium have been deployed as an environmentally benign biocontrol agent for these pests. However, the variability in host-specificity of Pasteuria is the contributing factor for its application. The adhesion of endospores which is the primary step of parasitism is therefore the key to understand the Velcro-like mechanism involving carbohydrate-protein interactions. Surface coat carbohydrates have been shown to effect pathogenesis of Caenorhabditis elegans. Mucins are a family of highly glycosylated proteins found on the surface coat of animal parasitic nematodes involved in the evasion of host immunity. Mucins in C. elegans have been shown to affect the recognition of its surface coat by lectin recognitions. To test the hypothesis that mucins of infective stage juveniles (J2s) of plant parasitic nematodes are involved in the attachment of Pasteuria endospores to the surface cuticle a series of experiments were carried out The orthologues to mucin-like genes from C. elegans were identified in M. incognita amplified by PCR, cloned, sequenced and dsRNA was synthisised by in-vitro transcription.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:657603 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Khan, Junaid Ali |
| Publisher | University of Reading |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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