Concurrent Session
Lucrezia Pinto (she/her/hers)
1Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) – Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA/CSIC), Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Paula Alonso-Ramos (she/her/hers)
Technician
1Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) – Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA/CSIC), Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Laura Carrillo (she/her/hers)
Post-doc
1Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) – Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA/CSIC), Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Clara Sánchez-Rodríguez (she/her/hers)
Principal investigator
1Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) – Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA/CSIC), Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Fusarium oxysporum (Fo) ability to reach the vasculature in the mature zone of the root determines its pathogenicity, responsible for enormous agronomical losses. Using arabidopsis-Fo pathosystem, we show that Fo mainly colonizes the apoplast of cells located at the xylem-pole and that it enters endodermal cells lacking suberin, called “passage cells”. As it is still unknown how vascular pathogens go through the apoplast of the internal root cell layers, we employed confocal microscopy and molecular biology tools to deepen our understanding of the biological function of suberin upon Fo infection. Our results show that suberin biosynthesis and deposition started earlier, and the number of passage cells significantly decreased in infected roots. Moreover, the abscisic acid-induced suberization of endodermal cells, significantly hindered the capacity of Fo to reach the vasculature. Accordingly, the pCASP1::CDEF1 line, expressing a plant suberin-degrading-enzyme in the endodermis, was highly susceptible to the pathogen while its response to the beneficial Fo was not affected. The high abundance of a putative Fo suberin-degrading-enzyme in arabidopsis roots infected secretome, further indicates that Fo is potentially able to digest the suberin to cross the endodermal layer. These data indicate that Arabidopsis root protection relies on the building of an endodermal suberin barrier as an effective physical defence against vascular pathogens.