Mi-DOG · The “parasitism-readers” of the world’s most damaging plant-parasitic nematode Meloidogyne incognita: new avenues to address food global security.

The “parasitism-readers” of the world’s most damaging plant-parasitic nematode Meloidogyne incognita: new avenues to address food global security.

Plant-parasitic nematodes (PPNs) represent a dramatical risk to a wide range of crop plants, by causing considerable losses estimated at several billion euros per year. Understanding how these microscopic worms achieve the pathogenic success is crucial given the significant impact on worldwide food security. The parasitic animals employ sophisticated strategies necessary for host invasion, resulting by the manipulation of important plant processes (i.e development, metabolism, or immunity). This is mostly based on the delivery of hundreds and highly diversified parasitism factors into the host cells – termed “effector proteins”. A majority are originated from dedicated secretory cell factories and play a crucial role in parasitism along the nematode lifecycle. Despite the growing number of studies on functional analyses of effectors, our understanding of how these pathogens cause diseases is far from complete. Studying the details of effector biology promises to be a fundamental task for the design of impactful and sustainable parasite control solutions. Recent efforts coupling large-scale transcriptome and genomic studies in different PPNs have revealed two important points: 1) The existence of concertedly regulated effector gene expression program at specific phases of their life cycle 2) and the presence of promoter motifs found upstream of co-expressed effector genes. From a collaborative work with French and UK researchers, we also identified a novel promoter motif - termed Mel-DOG box in the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne spp. These upstream non-coding genetic signatures are conceptually analogous but vary in their sequence, illustrating lineage-specific promoter motif in the phylum Nematoda. Together these studies have provided a means to further explore the effector biology in PPNs. In the light of this emerging theme, my objective was to answer the fundamental question: how parasitism is regulated in Meloidogyne incognita? I have thus addressed two specific objectives: • Capture and identify the key components associated to Mel-DOG signature in effectors using a combination of well-established and highly innovative CRISPR mediated methodologies • Understand their functional role in parasitism in vivo by RNA interference

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