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Poster

Session: Session 2 Presenting Authors at Posters (Evens)

P-296 - Unravelling nematode feeding site formation in plant roots

Thursday, July 17, 2025
13:30 - 15:15  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Plant Interactions with nematodes & parasitic plants

    Presenting Author(s)

  • TK

    Tina Kyndt

    Professor
    Ghent University
    Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

    • Author(s)

  • MS

    Maite Saura Sanchez

    Ghent University - Flanders Institute for Biotechnology
    Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

  • MD

    Melissa Deveux

    Ghent University
    Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

  • CE

    Carolina Escobar

    Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
    Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain

  • AG

    Almudena Gómez Rojas

    Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
    Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain

  • TB

    Tom Beeckman

    Ghent University - Flanders Institute for Biotechnology
    Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

  • BD

    Bert De Rybel

    Ghent University - Flanders Institute for Biotechnology
    Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Abstract Text:

Plant-parasitic nematodes lead to large economic losses in agriculture worldwide. Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) induce the formation of root galls, containing feeding cells called giant cells (GCs). The GCs develop by a series of drastic cellular changes, induced by massive reprogramming of gene expression. The molecular mechanisms underlying the very early stages of this developmental reprogramming are still poorly understood.

A comparative single-cell RNAseq analyses of infected root samples of two plant species, Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa, revealed that the early nematode-responsive cells are highly similar between species, both at transcriptional and functional level. We identified novel conserved genes activated in nematode infected samples and validated their induction upon infection using transcriptional reporter lines and Fluorescence in situ hybridization. A cell-type-specific regulatory network analysis identied conserved transcription factors and their targets that are specifically induced or repressed upon infection. Finally, we selected conserved genes for functional genetic studies and confirmed their role as nematode susceptibility genes. This work provides an unprecedented resource that will help design biotechnological tools against nematode infection in crops.