One tobacco gene links disease defense to growth hormones and stiffer cell walls
Janotík A, Zapletalová M, Bouhidel K, Fromentin J, Lišková M
Crispr
The same tobacco relatives that fill your tomato and pepper beds face water mold rots like Phytophthora, and this work shows the plant's early warning system also steers how stems and cells grow.
Plants have a sensor protein that helps them spot invaders like water molds, the group behind late blight and root rot. When scientists switched off this sensor's genes in tobacco, the plants couldn't mount a full defense against one water mold, though they handled gray mold and a bacterial pathogen fine. The plants also had stiffer stems and different levels of growth and stress hormones, so the sensor helps coordinate defense and growth together.
Key Findings
Double knockout of the two SOBIR1 gene copies in allotetraploid tobacco abolished cell death triggered by Phytophthora and Pythium elicitins and eliminated sustained ROS accumulation, while an attenuated early ROS burst remained.
Mutants had weaker resistance to Phytophthora parasitica but unchanged responses to Botrytis cinerea and Pseudomonas syringae, indicating pathogen-specific roles.
Mutant hypocotyls had increased cell wall stiffness despite upregulated wall-loosening genes, with altered levels of cytokinins, salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and their conjugates.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers used gene editing to remove a key immune-sensing protein from tobacco plants. The plants lost a major defense against a water mold pathogen, and they also showed changes in growth hormones and cell wall stiffness, so the protein does much more than detect invaders.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
SOBIR1 Integrates Pathogen Recognition and Hormonal Metabolism in Nicotiana tabacum.
The receptor-like kinase SOBIR1 (SUPPRESSOR OF BIR1) is a core component of immune receptor complexes mediating plant responses to extracellular immunogenic signals. While its role in pattern-trigg...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Targeted knockout of a host peroxisomal peptidase confers field resistance to...
The corn in your grocery store and the staple food keeping millions of East African families fed is under serious threat from a viral disease that can wipe o...
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. Seventy-nine species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rus...