Alonso J Pardal

The University of Warwick · Warwick Medical School (WMS)

In both plants and animals, nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immune receptors play critical roles in pathogen recognition and activation of innate immunity. In plants, NLRs recognise pathogen-derived effector proteins and initiate effector-triggered immunity (ETI). However, the molecular mechanisms that link NLR-mediated effector recogn...

Legumes house nitrogen-fixing endosymbiotic rhizobia in specialized polyploid cells within root nodules, which undergo tightly regulated metabolic activity. By carrying out expression analysis of transcripts over time in Medicago truncatula nodules we found that the circadian clock enables coordinated control of metabolic and regulatory processes l...

Core histones package chromosomal DNA and regulate genomic transactions, with their import and deposition involving a dedicated repertoire of molecular chaperones. Histones H3 and H4 have been predominantly characterised as obligate heterodimers, however, recent findings have alluded to the existence of a significant pool of monomeric histone H3 in...

Perception of microbes by plants leads to dynamic reprogramming of the transcriptome, which is essential for plant health. The appropriate amplitude of this transcriptional response can be regulated at multiple levels, including chromatin. However, the mechanisms underlying the interplay between chromatin remodeling and transcription dynamics upon...

The biocontrol agent Paenibacillus alvei K165 was previously shown to protect Arabidopsis thaliana plants against Verticillium dahliae. Here we show that K165 also confers inherited immune resistance against V. dahliae. By performing a histone acetyltransferases mutant screen, ChIP-assays and transcriptomic experiments we were able to show that his...

Understanding how plants respond to nitrogen in their environment is crucial for determining how they use it and how the nitrogen use affects other processes related to plant growth and development. Under nitrogen limitation the activity and affinity of uptake systems is increased in roots, and lateral root formation is regulated in order to adapt...

Nucleosomes represent the fundamental repeating unit of eukaryotic DNA, and comprise eight core histones around which DNA is wrapped in nearly two superhelical turns. Histones do not have the intrinsic ability to form nucleosomes; rather, they require an extensive repertoire of interacting proteins collectively known as ‘histone chaperones’. At a f...

Auxin is considered one of the cardinal hormones in plant growth and development. It regulates a wide range of processes throughout the plant. Synthetic auxins exploit the auxin-signalling pathway and are valuable as herbicidal agrochemicals. Currently, despite a diversity of chemical scaffolds all synthetic auxins have a carboxylic acid as the act...

Trichoderma harzianum is a filamentous fungus well adapted to different ecological niches. Owing to its ability to antagonize a wide range of plant pathogens, it is used as a biological control agent in agriculture. Selected strains of T. harzianum are also able to increase the tolerance of plants to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, little is...

Southern blot analysis of wild-type (T34) and transformant strains. Genomic DNAs were XhoI- and BamHI-digested and the Thmbf1 cDNA was used as a probe. Lanes correspond to T. harzianum T34 (lane 1), Thmbf-CT (control transformant, lane 2), Thmbf-ov1 (lane 3), Thmbf-ov2 (lane 4), Thmbf-ov3 (lane 5) and Thmbf-ov4 (lane 6). EcoRI-HindIII-digested λ DN...

Dual cultures of strains T34, Thmbf-CT, Thmbf-ov1, Thmbf-ov2, Thmbf-ov3 and Thmbf-ov4 of T. harzianum and the pathogens F. oxyxporum (FO) (A) and B. cinerea (BC) (B) on continuous PDA medium. Plates only with the pathogen were used as controls. All plates were incubated at 28°C for 10 days.

Phenotype of ‘Moneymaker’ tomato plants derived from T. harzianum-treated seeds and inoculated with FO. The wild-type T34, the transformation control (Thmbf-CT), and the Thmbf1 overexpressing transformants (Thmbf-ov3 and Thmbf-ov4) were applied as T. harzianum strains. Plants without T. harzianum or FO treatment were used as controls. Photographs w...