マイクロピラーによる機械的ストレスが植物寄生線虫の感染過程に与える影響の解析

抄録

The plant-parasitic nematodes cause considerable damage to agricultural crops around the world. To develop an economy/eco-friendly new method for defending plants from the nematodes, we need to deeply understand the process of infection by the nematodes. In this paper, we present a new method for analyzing effects of external mechanical stress on the infection process of plant-parasitic nematodes, Meloidogyne incognita also known as root-knot nematode, by using a microfluidic device which have micropillar array. By using the contact analysis based on the finite element method, we numerically estimated the mechanical stress to a gall (root knot) applied by micropillars. Thanks to the developed analytical system, we have succeeded in observing infection process of nematodes in detail and found out how nematode will change cells of plants under suppression from micropillars. Those experimental results suggest that the mechanical stress might be able to suppress the growth of gall and finally prevent the root-knot nematode from breeding.