This article explores issues associated with immersive storytelling in order to examine how the field of World Building can constitute a theoretical framework for practice in the context of VR-based ...and Full Dome artistic projects. With respect to immersion, the intent will be to interpret the concept of storytelling in relation with the recent formulation of the concept of extended reality (XR). The very concept of World Building is transauthor and transmedia by nature. The transauthor dimension of World Building resides in the idea of subcreation, i.e., designing environments and interaction rules that help create a storytelling basis for generating multiple stories. Once the universe has been conceived, stories written by different authors take shape through transmedia processes across multiple distribution media (film, video games, web, etc.). The question then arises: How can the World Building approach shape the construction of immersive experiences? The article sets out to answer this question, and in doing so, to contribute to the research on environmental storytelling.
La recherche de ce mémoire se situe dans le domaine de la narrativité en milieu immersif (aussi appelé « immersive storytelling »). En me basant sur l'univers créé par James Matthew Barrie pour sa ...pièce Peter Pan (et son roman éponyme) mais aussi sur le croisement des différentes adaptations de l'histoire, je composerai une cartographie des lieux intégrant plusieurs environnements classiques de cette diégèse. Ceux-ci constitueront la matière narrative à partir de laquelle je proposerai l'univers Peter Pan. La carte du Pays Imaginaire permettra de transposer une histoire originalement destinée à un média traditionnel, tel que le théâtre ou la littérature, vers le média immersif de la réalité virtuelle. Pour ce faire, mon hypothèse de travail se basera principalement sur l'application des processus de création d'univers narratifs (une traduction libre de l'approche dite de World Building). Ainsi, j'utiliserai les notions que j'ai acquises en étudiant l'animation 3D pour mieux comprendre les tenants et aboutissants d'un environnement immersif comme outil narratif. Loin de m'arrêter à la simple transposition d'un conte pour un dispositif de diffusion, je tenterai de démontrer qu'il est possible non seulement d'utiliser les dispositifs immersifs comme outils narratifs, mais également que ceux-ci peuvent avoir une incidence réelle sur la perception de l'histoire et la façon de transmettre celle-ci. Il me sera alors possible d'utiliser ce projet pour déduire les effets d'une telle installation sur la narration proposée. C'est donc à travers le récit de mes expérimentations qu'il sera possible de saisir les notions essentielles à la création d'un univers narratif destiné à un dispositif immersif tel qu'un dôme de projection ou des lunettes de réalité virtuelle. Il en résultera une meilleure compréhension des contraintes propres à ce média émergent ainsi qu'un ensemble d'outils d'analyse permettant une meilleure compréhension des moyens à déployer pour atteindre une véritable narration en milieu immersif.
The novel classes of plant pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins identified during the last decade also include novel peptide families. This review specifically focuses on these pathogenesis-related ...peptides, including proteinase inhibitors (PR-6 family), plant defensins (PR-12 family), thionins (PR-13 family) and lipid transfer proteins (PR-14 family). For each family of PR peptides, the general features concerning occurrence, expression and possible functions of their members are described. Next, more specifically the occurrence of each PR peptide family in the model plant
Arabidopsis thaliana is discussed. Single-gene studies performed on particular gene members of a PR peptide family are reported. In addition, expression data of yet undescribed gene members of that particular PR peptide family are presented by consultation of publicly available micro-array databases. Finally an update is provided on the potential role of these PR peptides in
A. thaliana, with a focus on their possible involvement in plant defense.
The Plant Peptidome Tavormina, Patrizia; De Coninck, Barbara; Nikonorova, Natalia ...
The Plant cell,
08/2015, Volume:
27, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Peptides fulfill a plethora of functions in plant growth, development, and stress responses. They act as key components of cell-to-cell communication, interfere with signaling and response pathways, ...or display antimicrobial activity. Strikingly, both the diversity and amount of plant peptides have been largely underestimated. Most characterized plant peptides to date acting as small signaling peptides or antimicrobial peptides are derived from nonfunctional precursor proteins. However, evidence is emerging on peptides derived from a functional protein, directly translated from small open reading frames (without the involvement of a precursor) or even encoded by primary transcripts of microRNAs. These novel types of peptides further add to the complexity of the plant peptidome, even though their number is still limited and functional characterization as well as translational evidence are often controversial. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of the reported types of plant peptides, including their described functional and structural properties. We propose a novel, unifying peptide classification system to emphasize the enormous diversity in peptide synthesis and consequent complexity of the still expanding knowledge on the plant peptidome.
Previously, it was shown that the Arabidopsis thaliana plant defensins AtPDF1.1 (At1g75830) and AtPDF1.2a (At5g44420) exert in vitro antimicrobial properties and that their corresponding genes are ...expressed in seeds and induced in leaves upon pathogen attack, respectively. In this study, the expression profile of both AtPDF1.1 and AtPDF1.2a is analysed in wild-type plants upon different stress-related treatments and the effect of modulation of their expression in transgenic plants is examined in both host and nonhost resistance. AtPDF1.1, which was originally considered to be seed-specific, is demonstrated to be locally induced in leaves upon fungal attack and exhibits an expression profile distinct from that of AtPDF1.2a, a gene frequently used as marker for the ethylene/jasmonate-mediated signaling pathway. Transgenic plants with modulated AtPDF1.1 or AtPDF1.2a gene expression show no altered phenotype upon Botrytis cinerea inoculation. However, constitutive overexpression of AtPDF1.1 in A. thaliana leads to a reduction in symptoms caused by the nonhost Cercospora beticola causing non-spreading spots on A. thaliana leaves. These results indicate that AtPDF1.1 and AtPDF1.2a clearly differ regarding their expression profile and functionality in planta. It emphasizes the additional level of complexity and fine-tuning within the highly redundant plant defensin genes in A. thaliana.
•Root defense responses are less well studied than those in leaves.•Root and leaf defense responses share many similarities as well as differences.•Roots possess specialized structures as part of ...their defense response.•The availability of plant and fungal genomes makes it an exciting era to study root responses.
Diseases caused by soil-borne pathogens result worldwide in significant yield losses in economically important crops. In contrast to foliar diseases, relatively little is known about the nature of root defenses against these pathogens. This review summarizes the current knowledge on root infection strategies, root-specific preformed barriers, pathogen recognition, and defense signaling. Studies reviewed here suggest that many commonalities as well as differences exist in defense strategies employed by roots and foliar tissues during pathogen attack. Importantly, in addition to pathogens, plant roots interact with a plethora of non-pathogenic and symbiotic microorganisms. Therefore, a good understanding of how plant roots interact with the microbiome would be particularly important to engineer resistance to root pathogens without negatively altering root-beneficial microbe interactions.
The fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea establishes a necrotrophic interaction with its host plants, including lettuce (Lactuca sativa), causing it to wilt, collapse and eventually dry up and die, which ...results in serious economic losses. Global expression profiling using RNAseq and the newly sequenced lettuce genome identified a complex network of genes involved in the lettuce–B. cinerea interaction. The observed high number of differentially expressed genes allowed us to classify them according to the biological pathways in which they are implicated, generating a holistic picture. Most pronounced were the induction of the phenylpropanoid pathway and terpenoid biosynthesis, whereas photosynthesis was globally down‐regulated at 48 h post‐inoculation. Large‐scale comparison with data available on the interaction of B. cinerea with the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana revealed both general and species‐specific responses to infection with this pathogen. Surprisingly, expression analysis of selected genes could not detect significant systemic transcriptional alterations in lettuce leaves distant from the inoculation site. Additionally, we assessed the response of these lettuce genes to a biotrophic pathogen, Bremia lactucae, revealing that similar pathways are induced during compatible interactions of lettuce with necrotrophic and biotrophic pathogens.
This study includes an extended RNAseq analysis of the locally induced defence responses in leaves of lettuce after inoculation with Botrytis cinerea, an economically important pathogen affecting many dicot plant species. To our knowledge, this is the first reported quantitative transcriptomic study of lettuce, which was possible after the recent unravelling of the lettuce genome. The observed high number of differentially expressed genes allowed us to classify them according to the biological pathways indicating the induction of secondary metabolism, with the phenylpropanoid pathway and terpenoid biosynthesis among the most pronounced responses. Subsequent qRT‐PCR‐based gene expression analysis on a limited set of genes resulting from our RNAseq‐study revealed a high similarity in (i) the response in locally infected versus systemic leaves and (ii) in the induction of similar pathways during compatible interactions of lettuce with necrotrophic versus biotrophic pathogens.
Many eukaryotic RNAs have been considered non-coding as they only contain short open reading frames (sORFs). However, there is increasing evidence for the translation of these sORFs into bioactive ...peptides with potent signaling, antimicrobial, developmental, antioxidant roles etc. Yet only a few peptides encoded by sORFs are annotated in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana.
To aid the functional annotation of these peptides, we have developed ARA-PEPs (available at http://www.biw.kuleuven.be/CSB/ARA-PEPs ), a repository of putative peptides encoded by sORFs in the A. thaliana genome starting from in-house Tiling arrays, RNA-seq data and other publicly available datasets. ARA-PEPs currently lists 13,748 sORF-encoded peptides with transcriptional evidence. In addition to existing data, we have identified 100 novel transcriptionally active regions (TARs) that might encode 341 novel stress-induced peptides (SIPs). To aid in identification of bioactivity, we add functional annotation and sequence conservation to predicted peptides.
To our knowledge, this is the largest repository of plant peptides encoded by sORFs with transcript evidence, publicly available and this resource will help scientists to effortlessly navigate the list of experimentally studied peptides, the experimental and computational evidence supporting the activity of these peptides and gain new perspectives for peptide discovery.
Plant stress responses involve numerous changes at the molecular and cellular level and are regulated by highly complex signaling pathways. Studying protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the ...resulting networks is therefore becoming increasingly important in understanding these responses. Crucial in PPI networks are the so-called hubs or hub proteins, commonly defined as the most highly connected central proteins in scale-free PPI networks. However, despite their importance, a growing amount of confusion and controversy seems to exist regarding hub protein identification, characterization and classification. In order to highlight these inconsistencies and stimulate further clarification, this review critically analyses the current knowledge on hub proteins in the plant interactome field. We focus on current hub protein definitions, including the properties generally seen as hub-defining, and the challenges and approaches associated with hub protein identification. Furthermore, we give an overview of the most important large-scale plant PPI studies of the last decade that identified hub proteins, pointing out the lack of overlap between different studies. As such, it appears that although major advances are being made in the plant interactome field, defining hub proteins is still heavily dependent on the quality, origin and interpretation of the acquired PPI data. Nevertheless, many hub proteins seem to have a reported role in the plant stress response, including transcription factors, protein kinases and phosphatases, ubiquitin proteasome system related proteins, (co-)chaperones and redox signaling proteins. A significant number of identified plant stress hubs are however still functionally uncharacterized, making them interesting targets for future research. This review clearly shows the ongoing improvements in the plant interactome field but also calls attention to the need for a more comprehensive and precise identification of hub proteins, allowing a more efficient systems biology driven unraveling of complex processes, including those involved in stress responses.
Plant defensins are small, cysteine-rich peptides with antifungal activity against a broad range of yeast and fungi. In this study we investigated the antibiofilm activity of a plant defensin from ...coral bells (Heuchera sanguinea), i.e. HsAFP1. To this end, HsAFP1 was heterologously produced using Pichia pastoris as a host. The recombinant peptide rHsAFP1 showed a similar antifungal activity against the plant pathogen Fusarium culmorum as native HsAFP1 purified from seeds. NMR analysis revealed that rHsAFP1 consists of an α-helix and a triple-stranded antiparallel β-sheet stabilised by four intramolecular disulfide bonds. We found that rHsAFP1 can inhibit growth of the human pathogen Candida albicans as well as prevent C. albicans biofilm formation with a BIC50 (i.e. the minimum rHsAFP1 concentration required to inhibit biofilm formation by 50% as compared to control treatment) of 11.00 ± 1.70 μM. As such, this is the first report of a plant defensin exhibiting inhibitory activity against fungal biofilms. We further analysed the potential of rHsAFP1 to increase the activity of the conventional antimycotics caspofungin and amphotericin B towards C. albicans. Synergistic effects were observed between rHsAFP1 and these compounds against both planktonic C. albicans cells and biofilms. Most notably, concentrations of rHsAFP1 as low as 0.53 μM resulted in a synergistic activity with caspofungin against pre-grown C. albicans biofilms. rHsAFP1 was found non-toxic towards human HepG2 cells up to 40 μM, thereby supporting the lack of a general cytotoxic activity as previously reported for HsAFP1. A structure-function study with 24-mer synthetic peptides spanning the entire HsAFP1 sequence revealed the importance of the γ-core and its adjacent regions for HsAFP1 antibiofilm activity. These findings point towards broad applications of rHsAFP1 and its derivatives in the field of antifungal and antibiofilm drug development.
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