Secondment of Yesenia Madrigal Bedoya from Universidad de Antioquia (COL) to Wageningen University and Research (NL)

I am Yesenia Madrigal Bedoya, I am a PhD student working with Dr. Natalia Pabón-Mora at the Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia. I came back to my home country after a two month research exchange at Wageningen University (Netherlands) between October – December 2022. During this secondment I was trained by Dr. Marian Bemer at the group of Dr. Gerco Angenent in the Wageningen Plant Research Institute. The group is pioneer in the implementation of Yeast two hybrid (Y2H) assays for in vitro studies assessing plant protein interactions. During my time in Wageningen I studied the interactions between nine canonical transcription factors of the fruit gene regulatory network in Bocconia frutescens (Papaveraceae). B. frutescens is a tropical poppy species with a fruit that morphoanatomically resembles, to some extent, the silique in Arabidopsis. I assessed the interaction between BofrPI, BofrAP3, BofrAG, BofrSEP1, BofrSEP2, BofrSEP3, BofrFL1, BofrFL2 and BofrSPT to test if the network that controls fruit development in poppies is similar to that reported in model species like Arabidopsis. The results show that the MADS-box proteins BofrFL1 and BofrFL3, which are known to control valve formation, interact with BofrSEP1 and BofrSEP3 proteins also active during fruit development. In addition, BofrSPT, a bHLH factor expressed only in the dehiscence zone, is able to homodimerize. These results, together with previous expression data in poppies will contribute to understanding the diverse development mechanisms underlying the patterning of dry dehiscent fruits in basal eudicots. The visit to Wageningen not only allowed me to get data for the ongoing fruit evolution projects in the plant evo devo group in Colombia, but in addition, I was also able to test the interaction of 14 proteins related with flowering in neotropical orchids, as part of my ongoing PhD project in Colombia. I am thrilled with the experience I got in the laboratory of Drs Bemer and Angenent and very excited to continue to use this powerful technique in other projects from now on.