Workshop on plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses

Coordinators

Marie Dufresne, Axel de Julien de Zélicourt

Goals

To provide students with a technical base and scientific reasoning enabling them to approach future laboratory or company internships with more confidence, thanks to the conduct of a mini research project involving various experimental approaches (plant pathology, molecular physiology, cytology, analysis of transgenic plants, analysis of transcriptomic data). These approaches are based on the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, under development or faced with biotic (plant pathogenic microorganisms) or abiotic (salt) stresses.

Skills

- Exploit online public databases as well as bioinformatics tool platforms (reinforcement)
 - Design and implement a scientific approach to answer a biological question(s)
 - Know the main approaches and techniques used for the functional characterisation of a gene in a model plant species
 - Implement the basic approaches in phytopathology.

Content

This course consists mainly in a practical approach as well as intensive scientific reasoning based on a theme close to a research question. In recent years, the theme chosen has been the following: What is the impact of a beneficial bacterium of the plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses? Other research questions may potentially replace the current theme, but the idea is to maintain a set of integrative questions in the field of plant response to biotic and/or abiotic stresses. In parallel, the students are implementing a complete approach to a Koch postulate (diagnosis of the pathogen responsible for symptoms observed on plants).

Techniques and methodologies used: DNA extraction, PCR and quantitative PCR, different methods of inoculation of pathogens on plants and qualitative and quantitative analysis of symptoms, Koch's postulate, manipulation of different bioinformatics tools (blastn, AgriGO, G.Profiler, MEME, STRING, KEGG,...).

Interactive tutorials, generally in the form of round tables, will allow students to step back from the experimental work carried out and to broaden the scope of their experimental strategies in response to a biological question. They allow the students to refresh the basic principles of numerous techniques by integrating them into a research approach (analysis of mutants, transformation techniques for higher plants and limitations, regulation of gene expression, signalling, microscopy techniques, use of gene expression databases).

Format

Mainly practical courses but also some tutorial (transcriptomic analyses), and rount tablebetween students and teachers.

Language : English

Elective TU

ECTS : 4

Directed Study : 6; Practical Study : 36