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Biomedical subjects

Debashis Sahoo

Publications and source records attributed to Debashis Sahoo.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2026

Rs_MEP1 Is Required for the Pathogenesis of Rhizoctonia solani AG1-IA in Plants.

Rhizoctonia solani AG1-IA is a polyphagous necrotrophic fungal pathogen that causes sheath blight disease in rice. Efforts are being made to identify pathogenicity-associated genes in R. solani and modulate them to develop a disease control strategy. Here, we investigated the roles of some predicted pathogenicity-associated genes of R. solani that have previously been reported to be upregulated during infection in rice. The tobacco rattle virus-based host-induced gene silencing of the selected pathogenicity-associated genes revealed that silencing of Rs_MEP1, a zinc-containing Peptidase_M43 domain metalloprotease, severely compromises R. solani infection in tomato. Moreover, double-stranded RNA-mediated silencing of Rs_MEP1 prevented R. solani infection in rice. The signal sequence trap assay indicated the secretory nature of Rs_MEP1, and the reporter assay suggested its localization in the plant apoplast. Notably, Agrobacterium-mediated transient overexpression of Rs_MEP1 induces necrotic cell death responses in plants. We provide evidence that Rs_MEP1 interacts with the GH19 family of rice chitinases and potentially modulates their functions. Overall, our study emphasizes that Rs_MEP1 facilitates R. solani in promoting necrotic responses and targets rice GH19 chitinases to impart disease susceptibility in plants. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

Rhizoctonia↗
PubMed2025

Germline stem cell isolation, lineage tracing, and aging in a protochordate.

Germline stem cells (GSCs), the source of gametes, are the only stem cells capable of passing genes to future generations and are therefore considered units of natural selection. Yet, the factors that influence GSC fitness, and thus govern GSC competition, which exist in both protochordates and mammals, remain poorly understood. We studied how aging affects GSC fitness in the protochordate Botryllus schlosseri, an evolutionary crosspoint between invertebrates and vertebrates. GSCs were isolated and distinguished from developing and mature gametes using flow cytometry and scRNA-Seq, facilitated by a new PacBio genome assembly. Moreover, their function was validated through a novel lineage tracing approach that combines membrane-labeled GSC transplantation with scRNA-Seq. Leveraging our method to isolate them, single-cell transcriptomics showed significant age-related changes between young and old GSCs. Spermatids and sperm, however, showed minimal changes, suggesting that reproductive aging is governed by GSCs rather than by gametes. Reduced expressions of markers like DDX4 and PIWIL1 in aged GSCs mirrored trends in mammalian datasets, pointing to a conserved GSC-driven aging mechanism across chordate evolution. This study provides new techniques that lay the foundation to investigate further drivers of GSC fitness and highlights fertility-related genes as promising targets for therapies to preserve reproductive health.

Journal Article↗