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Poster

Session: Session 1 Presenting Authors at Posters (Evens)

P-200 - Plant Cell Wall Integrity Mechanisms: Growth Control and Oomycete Susceptibility

Tuesday, July 15, 2025
09:55 - 11:30  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Microbial infection strategies (pathogens & non-pathogens)

Plant cells have developed complex signaling pathways to coordinate their intracellular growth machinery with their extracellular cell wall, that shields them from the environment. These pathways, or cell wall integrity mechanisms, are governed in higher plants by receptor-like kinases, including FERONIA (FER). Interestingly, such mechanisms discovered in the flowering model plant Arabidopsis thaliana are, at least in part, conserved in the bryophyte Marchantia polymorpha. Our recent multi-omic approach on a knockdown mutant for Marchantia MpFER, has revealed that FER regulates plant defence responses, in particular against the parasitic oomycete Phytophthora palmivora. Considering that parasitic pathogens can manipulate plant defence to infect and establish disease, and cell wall mechanisms are central to plant development, we hypothesized that the FER-dependent pathways could regulate the outcome of plant-Phytophthora interactions. Here, we will present our AI-based macroscopic symptoms phenotyping pipeline as well as the microscopic and molecular characterization of the responses of cell wall integrity mutants in both M. polymorpha and A.  thaliana. Interestingly, while in Arabidopsis, AtFER and its signaling partners, clearly contribute positively to plant immunity, in Marchantia, MpFER could be manipulated by Phytophthora to establish susceptibility suggesting that the role of FER has been reshaped during land plant evolution.