Songkui Cui

Kunming Institute of Botany Chinese Academy of Sciences

Parasitic plants thrive by infecting other plants. Flowering plants evolved parasitism independently at least 12 times, in all cases developing a unique multicellular organ called the haustorium that forms upon detection of haustorium-inducing factors derived from the host plant. This organ penetrates into the host stem or root and connects to its...

Parasitic plants in the family Orobanchaceae are destructive weeds of agriculture worldwide. The haustorium, an essential parasitic organ used by these plants to penetrate host tissues, is induced by host-derived phenolic compounds called haustorium-inducing factors (HIFs). The origin of HIFs remains unknown, although the structures of lignin monom...

Parasitic plants form a specialized organ, a haustorium, to invade host tissues and acquire water and nutrients. To understand the molecular mechanism of haustorium development, we performed a forward genetics screening to isolate mutants exhibiting haustorial defects in the model parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum. We isolated two mutants t...

Parasitic plants in the family Orobanchaceae, such as Striga, Orobanche and Phelipanche, often cause significant damage to agricultural crops. The Orobanchaceae family comprises more than 2000 species in about 100 genera, providing an excellent system for studying the molecular basis of parasitism and its evolution. Notably, the establishment of mo...

Parasitic plants infect other plants by forming haustoria, specialized multicellular organs consisting of several cell types, each of which has unique morphological features and physiological roles associated with parasitism. Understanding the spatial organization of cell types is, therefore, of great importance in elucidating the functions of haus...

Striga hermonthica is a root parasitic plant that causes considerable crop yield losses. To parasitize host plants, parasitic plants develop a specialized organ called the haustorium that functions in host invasion and nutrient absorption. The initiation of a prehaustorium, the primitive haustorium structure before host invasion, requires the perce...

Orobanchaceae parasitic plants are major threats to global food security, causing severe agricultural damage worldwide. Parasitic plants derive water and nutrients from their host plants through multicellular organs called haustoria. The formation of a prehaustorium, a primitive haustorial structure, is provoked by host-derived haustorium-inducing...

Parasitic plants are worldwide threats that damage major agricultural crops. To initiate infection, parasitic plants have developed the ability to locate hosts and grow towards them. This ability, called host tropism, is critical for parasite survival, but its underlying mechanism remains mostly unresolved. To characterise host tropism, we used the...

Parasitic plants are globally prevalent pathogens that withdraw nutrients from their host plants using an organ known as the haustorium. The external environment including nutrient availability affects the extent of parasitism and to understand this phenomenon, we investigated the role of nutrients and found that nitrogen is sufficient to repress h...

Characterizing molecular aspects of haustorium development by parasitic plants in the Orobanchaceae family has identified hormone signaling/transport and specific genes as major players.

寄生植物とは，他の高等植物の組織内に侵入し，維管束をつなげて水や栄養分を吸収して生 育する植物である。寄生植物は全被子植物の約1%を占める 4500 種ほど存在し，その分類群 は約 20 科 280 属と多岐にわたる (Rubiales and Heide-Jørgensen, 2011)。系統解析から，寄生植 物は 12-13 回の独立した進化により出現したと推測されている (Westwood et al., 2010)。これ らの多岐にわたる寄生植物種の共通項は，「吸器」とよばれる寄生器官を形成することである。 ラフレシア(Rafflesiaceae 科植物)などの菌糸状の内生吸器を作る植物を除き，吸器は植物の 根または茎の一部が変形して形成されたもので，宿主への付着・侵入する機能を持ち...

Tissue adhesion between plant species occurs both naturally and artificially. Parasitic plants establish intimate relationship with host plants by adhering tissues at roots or stems. Plant grafting, on the other hand, is a widely used technique in agriculture to adhere tissues of two stems. Here we found that the model Orobanchaceae parasitic plant...

Parasitic plants infect other plants by forming haustoria, specialized multicellular organs consisting of several cell types each of which has unique morphological features and physiological roles associated with parasitism. Understanding the spatial organization of cell types is, therefore, of great importance in elucidating the functions of haust...

Parasitic plants in the genus Striga, commonly known as witchweeds, cause major crop losses in sub-Saharan Africa and pose a threat to agriculture worldwide. An understanding of Striga parasite biology, which could lead to agricultural solutions, has been hampered by the lack of genome information. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of Strig...

Parasitic plants in the Orobanchaceae family include devastating weed species, such as Striga, Orobanche and Phelipanche, which infest important crops and cause economic losses of over a billion US dollars worldwide, yet the molecular and cellular processes responsible for such parasitic relationships remain largely unknown. Parasitic species of th...

The parasitic witchweed Striga hermonthica causes devastating damage to crops in sub-Saharan Africa, yet the mechanism of its parasitism is not well understood. Parasitic plants form a special organ called a haustorium to obtain water and nutrients from host plants. The haustorium is induced by host-derived small molecules, collectively named haust...

Visualization of NO− and ·OH. For visualization of NO− (A–C) and ·OH (D–F), haustoria of S. hermonthica induced by 10 μM DMBQ (B,E) or syringic acid (C,F) for 24 h were stained with 10 μM DAF-2 DA (A–C) or 10 μM APF (D–F) for 30 min. Radicals grown in water (A, D) were observed as a control. Left and right panels show confocal microscope images and...

Effects of SHAM and PAO on haustorium formation. (A) Concentration-dependent inhibition of SHAM on haustorium formation induced by DMBQ or syringic acid. (B) Effect of PAO on haustorium induction by DMBQ or syringic acid. Error bars indicate SE (n = 3), and NT, not tested. Different lower-case letters represent significant differences as determined...

Images of S. hermonthica seedlings treated with ROS inhibitors and DMBQ or syringic acid. Germinated S. hermonthica seedlings were exposed to each inhibitor at indicated concentrations with or without (control) 10 μM DMBQ or syringic acid and observed after 24 h of treatment. White arrowheads indicate brownish radicle tip by high concentration of e...

Chemicals used in this study.

Time-lapse movie of H2O2 accumulations during haustorium formation. Time-lapse images H2O2 accumulation visualized by carboxy-H2DFFDA staining were taken every 30 min after with (A) or without (B) DMBQ treatment for 24 h.

Effects of ROS inhibitors on haustorium formation induced by rice root extracts. Haustorium formation rates were calculated after S. hermonthica seedlings were treated with 0.5% root extracts from cultivars Nipponbare and Koshihikari in the absence or presence of various ROS inhibitors. The concentration of each chemical is shown at the top left of...

Striga species are parasitic weeds that seriously constrain the productivity of staples including cereals and legumes in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. In the eastern and central Africa region, Striga spp. infest as much as 40 million hectares of smallholder farmland causing total crop failure during severe infestation. As molecular mechanisms underl...

Root hairs result from the polar outgrowth of root epidermis cells in vascular plants. Root hair development processes are regulated by intrinsic genetic programs, which are flexibly modulated by environmental conditions, such as nutrient availability. Basic programs for root hair development were present in early land plants. Subsequently, some pl...

Physical interaction between organelles is a flexible event and essential for cells to adapt rapid environmental stimuli. Germinating plants utilize oil bodies and peroxisomes to mobilize storage lipids for the generation of sucrose as main energy source. Although membrane interaction between oil bodies and peroxisomes has been widely observed, its...

A haustorium is the unique organ that invades host tissues and establishes vascular connections. Haustorium formation is a key event in parasitism, but its underlying molecular basis is largely unknown. Here we use Phtheirospermum japonicum, a facultative root parasite in the Orobanchaceae, as a model parasitic plant. We performed a forward genetic...

Peroxisomal matrix protein transport relies on 2 cytosolic receptors, PEX5 and PEX7, which import peroxisomal targeting signal type 1 (PTS1) and PTS2-containing proteins, respectively. To better understand the transport mechanism of PEX7, we isolated PEX7 complexes using proteomics. We identified PEX5 as well as PTS1- and PTS2-containing proteins w...

The biogenesis of peroxisomes is mediated by peroxins (PEXs). PEX7 is a cytosolic receptor that imports peroxisomal targeting signal type 2 (PTS2)-containing proteins. Although PEX7 is important for protein transport, the mechanisms that mediate its function are unknown. In this study, we performed proteomic analysis to identify PEX7-binding protei...