Over 800 million hectares of land throughout the world are salt-affected and a common method for dealing with salt stress problems is to reclaim affected soils with fast-growing salt- tolerant tree species such as Casuarina trees. Fast growing trees from the Casuarinaceae family have been successfully introduced in several tropical and subtropical countries to prevent erosion and rehabilitate degraded soils among other uses. Plants from the Casuarinaceae family are able to tolerate high salt content or pollutants such as heavy metals in the soil. They can enter nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis that allow them to colonize poor or disturbed soils and contribute to salt tolerance. The aim of this project will be to use deep sequencing technologies to analyze changes in gene expression in roots and nodules of Casuarina glauca in response to salt stress. In parallel, the same approach will be conducted in the symbiotic bacteria Frankia to identify molecular mechanisms of salt tolerance in Casuarinaceae trees and their symbiont Frankia.
C. glauca (Tony Rodd/Flickr via CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Proposer’s Name: Laurent LAPLAZE