Tomato plants have a second, overlooked defense weapon inside them
Criscuolo MC, Lelio ID, Buonanno M, Coppola M, Monti SM
Plant Signaling
The tomatoes ripening in your backyard bed carry a built-in chemical alarm system, and scientists just found it has a second, mostly separate wiring path that could someday mean fewer sprays needed to fight caterpillars and gray mold.
Tomato plants make a protein that gets cut into pieces when the plant is attacked, and one piece, called systemin, has long been known to switch on defenses against pests. This study shows the other leftover piece, which scientists had mostly ignored, actually triggers its own wide-ranging defense response, turning on different genes and helping the plant fight off both leaf-eating caterpillars and a common fungal disease called gray mold. It works differently than systemin does, suggesting tomato plants have more than one way to sense danger and respond.
Key Findings
The ProSys(1-178) fragment altered a much larger number of genes than full-length Prosystemin, with only 46 genes changed in common and those showing opposite expression patterns
Both ProSys(1-178) and full-length Prosystemin transgenic tomato plants gained resistance to Spodoptera littoralis caterpillars and Botrytis cinerea gray mold fungus
Externally applied systemin gave stronger protection against gray mold than ProSys(1-178), but ProSys(1-178) activated a broader set of defense-related genes, pointing to a distinct immune pathway
chevron_right Technical Summary
A protein fragment from tomato plants, separate from the well-known 'systemin' defense hormone, triggers its own broad set of immune responses that help tomatoes resist both insect pests and fungal disease.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Beyond Systemin: The multifaced role of ProSys(1-178) in tomato defense.
Plants constantly face multiple biotic and abiotic stresses, which they counteract through sophisticated immune mechanisms based on the recognition of endogenous and exogenous elicitors. Tomato Sys...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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