Merit for Marine’s Talk

Congratulations to Marine Cambon of the BAC-STOP project who recently won the Flash Presentation Award at the Molecular Microbial Ecology Group (MMEG) meeting on 1-2 December 2021. The prize was sponsored by the journal FEMS Microbiology Letters.

Marine had just 3 minutes to impress the judges with her talk entitled ‘Chemical cues as potential triggers of Brenneria goodwinii pathogenicity in Acute Oak Decline’. As part of the BAC-STOP team Marine is researching Acute Oak Decline, a complex disease that seems to be triggered by a number of factors including the presence of both the bacteria Brenneria goodwinii and the bark boring beetle Agrilus biguttatus. Marine’s presentation discussed chemicals produced by the beetle larvae which might trigger the expression of certain genes in the bacteria. Switching on these genes makes the bacteria more likely to cause disease. This sequence of events would make evolutionary sense for the bacteria – trees which have been damaged would be more easily infected as their front line defences have already been broken down by the beetle. So the beetle signals might be like a flashing neon sign for the bacteria saying ‘tree buffet this way’!

Marine, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Bangor University, uses infected log samples, chemical ecology and molecular biology techniques to try and understand this bacteria-beetle interaction. Being able to interrupt this signalling sequence might offer a way to protect oak trees from this devastating disease. The images below show the larvae and the kind of damage they can do in oak trees.