Simulating plant-pathogen interactions to better understand plant immune responses

Background and challenges

The immune response of plants differs from that of animals in that all plant cells are immunocompetent, i.e. they all have the same capacity to respond to the attack of a pathogen. This specificity has two important consequences:

1. The regulation of immunity is an important determinant of the resistance phenotype
2. The plant immune response is highly spatially structured, as the position of the cells is stable.

Faced with attacks by necrotrophic fungi (including Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, which causes white rot), plants predominantly mount a form of immune response called Quantitative Disease Resistance (QDR). At present, QDR is mainly studied at the cellular level, without really taking into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of this resistance.

Recent work shows that plant-pathogen interactions are closely linked to the spatial and temporal characteristics of the entities and processes involved.

To better understand QDR, it is therefore necessary to integrate the dynamics of environmental perception, signalling and transduction from the sub-cellular to the organ or whole-plant scale. For this, we propose to use modelling and computer simulation techniques of plant tissues at the cellular and multi-cellular scales. Although the interest of this approach is widely recognised for studying complex systems, involving the interaction of a very large number of entities in a network, it is still innovative in plant biology.

Goals

The TEMPLATE project aims to implement a dynamic model of plant-fungus interaction, in order to test several hypotheses on the establishment of the immune response in time and space by simulation. This model will attempt to represent the progression of a colony of mycelium of the pathogenic fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in a leaf of the model plant A. thaliana.

The biological question at the heart of this project will be that of the formation of patterns of immune response localised in time and space and associated with the modulation of the level of resistance linked to transcriptomic reprogramming.

We propose to use Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS), a formalism which is known for its reproducibility and modularity and allows a multi-formalism modelling approach.

In order to fully support biologists in their experiments, we will aim to develop a computational  framework that allows interactive modelling and simulation bringing the experimenter, biological subject and digital model together.

This project therefore aims both for a better understanding of the immune response of plants and for the development of a new methodology for interactive simulation in the field of biology.

Contacts - coordination :

Units involved and partners

INRAE participants

Partners