CHARACTERIZING CELLULAR RESPONSE TO XANTHOMONAS TRANSLUCENS INFECTION OF BARLEY AT THE SINGLE-CELL LEVEL

The pathogenic bacteria,Xt, limits barley production globally, however, little information is known about how cellular responses to infection effect barely leaf colonization. During infection, plants respond to pathogens in a diverse manner. Our preliminary data demonstrates thatXtdoes not uniformly colonize inner leaf tissue and that not all cells are targeted by the bacterial Type III secretion system (T3SS). Our current understanding of plant-pathogen interactions focuses on studying plant transcriptomes at a global, whole tissue level, resulting in loss of heterogeneity that may exist during infection. This project will investigate the spatiotemporal cellular response to T3SS-targeting and the corresponding effect on bacterial colonization following these Objectives:Objective 1: To define spatiotemporal aspects of virulence and immunity on bacterial inner leaf colonization.Objective 2: To identify transcriptomic differences in plant response to Xt infection at the global and single cell level.Objective 3: Investigate spatiotemporal induction of immune or susceptible responses duringXtinfection.