Research Collaboration: Rhodes and Södertörn
February 9, 2005
By Marius Vermaak
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Professor Ted Botha, Botany, recently started an exciting research and teaching collaboration with Professor Lisbeth Jonsson of Södertörn University College in Stockholm.
Professor Jonsson, who is Professor of Botany and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Södertörn Högskola, visited Botha's laboratories after the SA Association of Botanists meeting in Bloemfontein in January. The International Office arranged a guided tour of the campus and a meeting with Dr David Woods and Professor John Duncan.
The joint research programme will involve projects focused on studies of plant defence and transport systems in cereals, during and after insect attack. They will pay attention to structural as well as molecular aspects of insect-plant defence mechanisms, using molecular and fluorescent probes, confocal laser scanning microscope facilities (LSCM) and electron microscopy (TEM) techniques, and highly sophisticated molecular techniques developed in Sweden.
Plants growing in their natural environment, whether wild or cultivated, encounter a large number of challenges from grazing animals, other competing plants, insects and micro-organisms. To cope with these different types of biotic stress they have evolved a variety of defence systems, which may either be constitutive or inducible, either acting against a number of invaders or specific in their action. These invaders have a drastic effect on yield, and thus an understanding of the molecular interactions between the aphids and the plants is a central exciting component of our collaboration. "Given that insects such as aphids cause immense damage to crop plants, it becomes critical to find out what the insects do and what the plant can do to combat predators and how they can defend themselves. Our interests will involve looking at aphid-induced defence systems in barley plants, as well as the molecular biology of the induction of hydroxamic acid glucosides and ?-glucosidases, a constitutive defence system in rye, wheat and maize."
Rhodes students will have opportunities to work in Professor Jonsson's laboratories, using equipment such as the LSCM and micro-array systems which are being used to study genes that are switched on and off during insect attack. Professor Jonsson's students will be able to undertake complementary research here, using facilities available at Rhodes University, such as the microinjection, fluorescence and transmission electron microscopes.
Another important component of this collaboration is that Professor Botha has been invited as Visiting Professor to give a short course on plant structure function relationships in Stockholm.
