Legumes, as protein-rich crops, are widely used for human food, animal feed and vegetable oil production. Over the past decade, two legume species, Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus, have been adopted as model legumes for genomics and physiological studies. The tobacco transposable element, Tnt1, is a powerful tool for insertional mutagenesis and gene inactivation in plants. A large colle...

Saponins, an important group of bioactive plant natural products, are glycosides of triterpenoid or steroidal aglycones (sapogenins). Saponins possess many biological activities, including conferring potential health benefits for humans. However, most of the steps specific for the biosynthesis of triterpene saponins remain uncharacterized at the molecular level. Here, we use comprehensive gene ...

Disease outbreaks due to the consumption of legume seedlings contaminated with human enteric bacterial pathogens like Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enterica are reported every year. Besides contaminations occurring during food processing, pathogens present on the surface or interior of plant tissues are also responsible for such outbreaks. In the present study, surface and internal co...

Nodules are unique organs formed on roots of legumes by soil-borne bacteria, collectively known as rhizobium. Recently, we have shown that orthologs of the AINTEGUMENTA-like (AIL) AP2 transcription factors PLETHORA (PLT) 1 to 4, that redundantly regulate Arabidopsis thaliana root development are involved in root and nodule growth in Medicago truncatula. Hence, it is conceivable that rhizobium h...

Six Medicago species were investigated to characterize and valorize plant genetic resources of pastoral interest in Morocco. Samples were obtained from the core collection of the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI). The transferability of single sequence repeat markers of Medicago truncatula was successful with 97.6% efficiency across the five species. A total of 283 all...

The reproductive assurance hypothesis emphasizes that self-fertilization should evolve in species with reduced dispersal capability, low population size or experiencing recurrent bottlenecks. Our work investigates the ecological components of the habitats colonized by the snail, Galba truncatula, that may influence the evolution of selfing. Galba truncatula is a preferential selfer inhabiting f...

Jasmonate (JA)-mediated defences play important roles in host responses to pathogen attack, in particular to necrotrophic fungal pathogens that kill host cells in order to extract nutrients and live off the dead plant tissue. The root-infecting fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum initiates a necrotrophic growth phase towards the later stages of its lifecycle and is responsible for devastating Fu...

Four putative apyrase genes were identified from the model legume Medicago truncatula. Two of the genes identified from M. truncatula (Mtapy1 and Mtapy4) are expressed in roots and are inducible within 3 h after inoculation with Sinorhizobium meliloti. The level of mRNA expression of the other two putative apyrases, Mtapy2 and Mtapy3, was unaffected by rhizobial inoculation. Screening of a bact...