Transcriptional responses of wheat and the cereal cyst nematode Heterodera avenae during their early contact stage

Cereal cyst nematode (Heterodera avenae) is attracted to and aggregated around wheat roots to initiate infection, but this interaction between wheat and the nematode is not fully understood. The transcriptional responses of both wheat and H. avenae were examined during their early contact stage by mRNA sequencing analysis; certain numbers of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were validated using quantitative real-time PCR. The immobile host wheat root only had 93 DEGs (27 up-regulated and 66 down-regulated), while the mobile plant parasitic nematode reacted much more actively with 879 DEGs (867 up-regulated and 12 down-regulated). Among them, a number of wheat DEGs (mostly down-regulated) were involved in biotic stress pathways, while several putative effector genes were up-regulated in the nematode DEGs. One putative chitinase-like effector gene of H. avenae was able to suppress BAX-triggered programmed cell death in Nicotiana benthamiana. Results of these experiments demonstrated that nematode responded more actively than wheat during the contact stage of parasitism. The parasite’s responses mainly involved up-regulation of genes including at least one anti-plant-defence effector gene, whereas the host responses mainly involved down-regulation of certain defence-related genes.