Beyond Myrtle Rust: Growing rust fungi on artificial substrates

Описание: Presenter: Sarah Sale, University of Canterbury PhD candidate

New Zealand faces increasing risks from the impacts of plant diseases, such as those caused by the largest group of plant pathogens, rust fungi. Rust fungi are pathogens that infect, weaken and/or kill a large number of plant species and the diseases that they cause can have major environmental, economic and cultural impacts. Novel tools/approaches are being pursued to help tackle these pathogens. In particular, researchers are wanting to screen biological control agents (BCA) for their ability to reduce rust fungi virulence.

Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices can accelerate such screening enabling pathogen-BCA interactions to be observed at a single-cell level with high-throughput. One potential problem with these devices is that they require the pathogen to be grown separately from its natural host(s) in an artificial environment. Since rust fungi require a living host to complete their asexual reproductive life cycle, growth on artificial substrates is a challenge that must be overcome. Join us to hear Sarah Sale, PhD student at the University of Canterbury, talk about her progress in growing rust fungi on artificial surfaces. The substrates she is using include flat and heterogeneous high-resolution leaf surface replicates made of either silicone polymers or of agar-based media. The fungi demonstrated surface growth, pre-penetration structure formation, surface penetration and internal growth within the artificial substrates. She also shows comparable results from collaborative work using myrtle rust. These results get us a step closer to growing pathogens in a laboratory setting without the need for the host plant and the ability to use LOC devices for high throughput screening of BCAs.