Dr. Takaki Maekawa

Spatiotemporal interaction between plant and microbes
Primary interest of our group is in understanding the spatiotemporal coordination of the host response to pathogen attack. Due to recent advances in spatially resolved omics (e.g. single cell transcriptomics), these technologies have recently been applied to the field of plant-microbe interactions. However, these analyses often result only in the identification of "heterogeneity" in host responses. In comparison, our method of noninvasive analysis that enables long-term monitoring of changes in leaves has visualized spatio-temporal changes in host response to pathogen attack. Thus, cell-cell communication must contribute to shaping the spatiotemporal pattern leading to pathogen growth restriction and host cell death. This finding motivated us to map highresolution spatiotemporal molecular information on plant-microbe interactions. The coapplication of our spatiotemporal cellular analysis and spatially resolved omics should enable us to better elucidate the underlying biological roles of spatially & temporally coordinated host cellular responses.