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Poster

Session: Session 2 Presenting Authors at Posters (Evens)

P-428 - A highly efficient Arabidopsis thaliana composite plant generation strategy using Agrobacterium rhizogenes K599

Thursday, July 17, 2025
13:30 - 15:15  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Spatial & temporal resolution of the interaction interface
Agrobacterium rhizogenes is a well-known phytopathogen, capable of inducing hairy roots in infected plants. Composite (chimeric) plants consisting of wild type shoots and a mix of transformed, hairy roots and non-transformed wildtype roots can be generated using A. rhizogenes mediated transformation of shoot cuttings. The constructed composite plants have found wide applicability in plant research including studies on plant-(a)biotic interactions, systemic signaling processes and regeneration of transformed plants. Strikingly, while composite plant generation strategies exist for the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, they reportedly result in low composite plant generation efficiencies (15-20%). The low efficiency in turn demand increased labor and resources to obtain sufficient composite plants for downstream analyses. To address this limitation, we systematically explored the effects of bacterial growth media, different methods of plant inoculation, acetosyringone supplementation, and photoperiod through a fractional factorial design approach to accelerate protocol optimization. The final protocol resulted in average composite plant generation efficiencies exceeding 80%, significantly improving the amenability of A. thaliana for composite plant-based studies. We currently use the strategy to enrich for root cell subpopulations where target A. rhizogenes T-DNA genes are expressed, followed by -omics to decipher their modes of action during hairy root formation.