Reticulation in fleshy fruit: Multi-omics approaches to unravel the mechanisms involved in lignosuberized periderm tissue formation

Reticulation in fleshy fruit: Multi-omics approaches to unravel the mechanisms involved in lignosuberized periderm tissue formation

3^rd Annual Congress on Plant Biology & Agricultural Sciences
April 04, 2022 | Webinar

Hagai Cohen

Institute of Plant Science(ARO), Israel

Abstract:

Suberized and/or lignified (i.e., lignosuberized) periderm tissue often appears above the fleshy fruit skin upon mechanical damage due to environmental cues or as part of coordinated developmental processes. Even though lignosuberization of the fruit skin is of potentially great economical and agronomical value, the mechanisms underlying this process remain largely unknown. In our lab, we investigate these mechanisms by combining assorted microscopical techniques with an integrative multiomics approach comprising transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and lipidomics to untangle novel metabolic and proteomic components involved in skin lignosuberization of Cucurbitaceous species like cucumber and melons, as well as pepper belonging to the Solanaceae family. During development, the skin of these species undergoes cracking and is naturally coated with a thick corky layer, making it an excellent platform for revealing fundamental cellular machineries involved in fleshy fruit skin lignosuberization. These investigations yielded large-scale data that will likely provide an imperative reference source for the field of skin periderm tissue formation in fleshy fruit and suberin metabolism. It could further be used by the scientific community as a source in future metadata analyses that may lead to novel biological insight into fruit and plant development.

Biography:

Dr. Hagai Cohen obtained his Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology in the Faculty of Biology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, investigating the regulatory metabolic pathways involved in amino acid biosynthesis in plant seeds. It is then where he started to focus on metabolism in plants. During his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, he investigated the metabolic pathways leading to the formation of lipophilic barriers in plants such as epicuticular waxes, cutin, suberin and lignin. In early 2020, he opened his independent laboratory as a Principal Investigator in the Department of Vegetable and Field Crops, the Institute of Plant science at the Agricultural Research Organization (ARO, Volcani Center, Israel. His group is interested in elucidating various aspects of interactions between plant surfaces and pathogens, with a particular focus on metabolic networks operating on the course of pathogenic attack and invasion.

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