A team of biotechnology researchers from the University of East Anglia have developed a new way to increase disease resistance in plants by feeding them antibodies from animals. In their article, published in the journal Science , the team describes the development of llama and alpaca antibodies that allow them to fight off a type of plant fungus.
Previous work has shown that animals are much better at fighting diseases caused by microbes than plants. Affected plants simply die and fall to the ground. If several parts die off, the plant dies. On the other hand, animals have a complex immune system that involves the creation of new antibodies when new threats are detected, often within a matter of weeks. In this new experiment, the researchers wondered if it would be possible to borrow part of an animal's immune system to help plants fight infection.
To find out, the research team drew on other work, such as the work of a team at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research: they had found a way to use alpaca-derived single-domain antibody fragments to disrupt cellular processes in mammals. cells.
In the new study, the team created so-called picobodies, antibodies from llamas and alpacas that fused to the Pik 1 protein. In nature, the protein is commonly found in plants such as tobacco plants. Helps identify a protein that allows a type of explosive fungus to infect plant cells. The team also designed antibodies to attack fluorescent proteins.
The team then injected the rock bodies into different plant species and then exposed them to fungi. They found that plant cells exposed to fluorescent proteins die, leaving brown spots on plant leaves. They tested 11 different types of their picobodies and found that not only were four of them non-lethal to plant cells, they only killed cells that contained specific proteins, showing that such a strategy could be used to protect plants.
The researchers also found that their different versions of picobodies can be combined in different ways to give plants multiple ways to ward off a single disease.
For more information: Jiorgos Kourelis et al., NLR-Nanobody Immunoglobulin Receptor Fusion Confers Plant Disease Resistance, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.abn4116.
From BioRxiv : DOI: 10.1101/2021.10.24.465418
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QUOTE : Giving Animal Antibodies to Plants to Ward Off Disease (2023 March 3) Retrieved March 7, 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-03-animal-antibodies-ward-diseases.html
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