DynaMo Seminar: Edward Farmer

DynaMo Semiars are a series of public seminars hosted by DNRF Center DynaMo. We are pleased to be able to invite you to this seminar:

Prof. Edward (Ted) Farmer

University of Lausanne

Signalling in the first 3 minutes of herbivore attack

The leaf gets its resilience to attack by combining great tolerance to damage with the ability to synthesize molecules that target the digestive tract of herbivores. Central to leaf survival in the face of herbivory is jasmonate (JA), a defence prohormone that begins to accumulate within 30 s of wounding a leaf and that will lead to the activation of 1000 genes in the plant. It takes about 90 s to detect JA increases in distal leaves that share vascular connections to the wounded leaf. What signals lead to distal JA accumulation? We found that feeding Spodoptera littoralis larvae elicited electrical activity of a similar velocity (3 - 8 cm per min) to that expected for the long distance wound signal that leads to JA accumulation distal to wounds. Several genes that underlie the production of these signals were identified. It has also been necessary to identify the first enzyme of jasmonate synthesis that is operative dital to a wound. Only one of four 3-lipoxygenases in Arabidopsis fulfils this funtion allow us to define part of what a appears to be a new signal pathway that functions the first min of the leaf response to attack.

Edward E. Farmer is Professor at Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Lausanne. His research focusses on plant defense against herbivores and his laboratory undertakes basic research aimed at understanding the regulation and evolution of the jasmonate pathway. The techniques used range from genetics to electrophysiology and analytics. The fact that jasmonate is an oxygenated fatty acid derivative has drawn him to study the control of lipid oxidation. All his primary publications have something to do with fatty acid peroxidation.

Resent publications:

Mousavi, S.A.R., Chauvin, A., Pascaud, F., Kellenberger, S. and Farmer, E.E. (2013) GLUTAMATE RECEPTOR-LIKE genes mediate leaf-to-leaf wound signalling. Nature 500, 422-426.

Farmer, E.E., Mousavi, S. and Lenglet, A. (2013) Leaf numbering for experiments on long distance signalling in Arabidopsis. Nature Protocols Protocol Exchange doi:10.1038/protex.2013.071

Chauvin, A., Calderlari, D., Wolfender, J-L. and Farmer, E.E. (2013) Four 13-lipoxygenases contribute to rapid jasmonate synthesis in wounded Arabidopsis leaves: a role for LOX6 in responses to long distance wound signals. New Phytol. 197, 566-575.