Biology subjects

Mila, I.

Publications and source records attributed to Mila, I..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

A conserved root-knot nematode effector targets plant kinesin light chain related proteins to promote parasitism

Root-knot nematodes (RKNs) are obligate plant parasites that establish biotrophic interactions with a wide range of host plants, causing major crop losses worldwide. During infection, RKNs secrete effector proteins from their esophageal glands into root tissues via a stylet. These effectors target specific subcellular compartments and manipulate host cell functions to induce the formation of hypertrophied and multinucleated giant cells, which serve as feeding sites essential for nematode development. Here we describe a new RKN-specific effector, EFFECTOR17 (EFF17), conserved in the five most damaging RKN species: Meloidogyne incognita, M. enterolobii, M. arenaria, M. javanica, and M. hapla. In situ hybridization showed that EFF17 genes are specifically expressed in the esophageal glands of various RKN species. Silencing EFF17 in M. incognita reduced its reproduction on Nicotiana benthamiana, demonstrating a key role in parasitism. Yeast two-hybrid and split luciferase assays revealed that tomato and Arabidopsis KINESIN LIGHT CHAIN RELATED (KLCR)/CELLULOSE-MICROUBULE UNCOUPLING (CMU) proteins are host targets of MiEFF17. Arabidopsis klcr mutants developed significantly fewer galls and egg masses. Our findings propose that EFF17 manipulates KLCR function to promote parasitism.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Time-resolved bottleneck analysis in bacterial infection dynamics

Within-host pathogen dynamics are shaped by successive host-imposed barriers that generate bottlenecks and ultimately determine infection outcome, yet these processes remain difficult to study in vivo. Here, we use neutral genetic barcoding to quantify the root-entry bottleneck during infection of tomato by the bacterial soil-borne phytopathogen Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum. We establish an updated theoretical framework showing that the temporal structure of pathogen entry, often overlooked, is a key determinant of root colonisation. We introduce the concept of time-resolved bottleneck, capturing infection scenarios in which entry occurs continuously while the pathogen population simultaneously expands within the host. We develop quantitative tools that exploit barcode dynamics to disentangle the respective roles of motility, growth, and spatial competition, enabling direct inference of in vivo pathogen fluxes and growth rates and linking host susceptibility to mechanistic features of colonisation. Extending beyond plants, reanalysis of two independent animal infection datasets reveals previously unrecognised within-host development patterns. Together, these results show that time-resolved bottleneck is a general principle of bacterial infection dynamics and propose a new standard for barcoding-based studies: a host- and pathogen-agnostic framework that is directly applicable to a majority of existing STAMP(-R)-style datasets, distributed as an open, annotated R/Python notebook to facilitate community reuse.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2021

An NLR Integrated Decoy toolkit to identify plant pathogen effector targets

Plant resistance genes (or NLR "Nod-like Receptors") are known to contain atypical domains procuring them with a decoy capacity. Some of these integrated domains (or ID) allow the plant to lure the virulence determinants ("effectors") of pathogens and triggering a specific NLR immune reaction. In this work, our goal was to generate a library of known IDs that could be screened with plant pathogen effectors in order to identify putative new effector virulence targets and NLR-effector pairs. We curated the IDs contained in NLRs from seven model and crop plant species. We cloned 52 IDs representing 31 distinct Pfam domains. This library was screened for interaction by yeast-two-hybrid with a set of 31 conserved Ralstonia solanacearum type III effectors. This screening and the further in planta interaction assay allowed us to identify three interactions, involving different IDs (kinase, DUF3542, WRKY) and two type III effectors (RipAE and PopP2). PopP2 was found to physically interact with ID#85, an atypical WRKY domain integrated in the GmNLR-ID85 NLR protein from Soybean. Using a imaging method in living plant cells, we showed that PopP2 associates with ID#85 in the nucleus. But unlike the known WRKY-containing Arabidopsis RRS1-R NLR receptor, this newly identified soybean WRKY domain could not be acetylated by PopP2 and its atypical sequence (WRKYGKR) also probably renders it inefficient in plant immunity triggering. This ID toolkit is available for screening with other plant pathogen effectors and should prove useful to discover new effectors targets and potentially engineer new plant resistance genes.

plant biology↗