Ravi Kant

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8826869880

University of Delhi South Campus, India

Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain

Plant virology lab, CBGP, Spain

Molecular and phenotypic study of interactions between Pepper L alleles and Tobamovirus coat proteins to define their evolutionary relationship:

The focus of present study was to understand the role of environmental factors i.e. temperature to determine the interaction and co-evolution of Capsicum annuum L alleles and the tobamovirus Tobacco mild green mosaic virus (TMGMV) coat protein (CP) through a rapid, robust and high-throughput system. To understand the grassroots concept of interaction and co-evolution of Tobamoviruses and wild pepper plants, following objectives had been taken into consideration. (1) To discriminate the L1 and L1a sites responsible for CP recognition by transient interaction of L1 allele and P0-CP in N. benthamiana, N. tabacum cv. samsun and study of L1 mutants for P0/P1-CPs recognition at higher temperature. (2) The mechanism behind the interaction of a cloned and characterized pepper L1 allele from Mexico with TMGMV (P0 pathotype) CP. (3) To dissect out the target L1 and CP amino acid regions required for successful recognition event. The results obtained in this study promoted us for further in-depth analysis of target amino acids of L1 responsible for recognition of P0-CP at favorable as well as higher temperature, as in due course of evolution, the arm race between R and Avr proteins has led few resistant genes to functionally modify their expression in variable environmental conditions. Apparently, our study concludes that Agroinfiltration assay used is a promising tool and provides a great avenue to analyse the interaction and co-evolution of R and Avr proteins in specified, robust and high-throughput manner.

National Postdoc Fellow, National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi, India