Abstract
Plant elicitor peptides (Peps) are potent inducers of pattern-triggered immunity and amplify the immune response against diverse pathogens. Peps have been discovered and studied extensively in Arabidopsis and only recently orthologues in maize were also identified and characterized in more detail.Here, the presence of PROPEPs, the Pep precursors, and PEPRs, the Pep receptors, was investigated within the plant kingdom. PROPEPs and PEPRs were identified in most sequenced species of the angiosperms. The conservation and compatibility of the Pep-PEPR-system was analysed by using plants of two distantly related dicot families, Brassicaceae and Solanaceae, and a representative family of monocot plants, the Poaceae. All three plant families contain important crop plants, including maize, rice, tomato, potato, and canola. Peps were not recognized by species outside of their plant family of origin, apparently because of a divergence of the Pep sequences. Three family-specific Pep motifs were defined and the integration of such a motif into the Pep sequence of an unrelated Pep enabled its perception. Transient transformation of Nicotiana benthamiana with the coding sequences of the AtPEPR1 and ZmPEPR1a led to the recognition of Pep peptides of Brassicaceae or Poaceae origin, respectively, and to the proper activation of downstream signalling. It was concluded that signalling machinery downstream of the PEPRs is highly conserved whereas the leucine-rich repeat domains of the PEPRs co-evolved with the Peps, leading to distinct motifs and, with it, interfamily incompatibility.
Highlights
Plant immunity is triggered by the recognition of exog- molecular patterns are well-known representatives of the enous as well as endogenous elicitors
Peps mature from larger precursor proteins called PROPEPs and are recognized by leucine-rich repeat (LRR) receptor-like kinases known as Pep receptors (PEPRs)
Already in the earliest of these publications was the suggestion that PROPEPs might be present in a couple of plant species and not limited to Arabidopsis (Huffaker et al, 2006)
Summary
Plant immunity is triggered by the recognition of exog- molecular patterns are well-known representatives of the enous as well as endogenous elicitors. Plant elicitor peptides (Peps) are emerging as paradigms for DAMPs owing to their presence in dicot as well as monocot model plants and their supposed release upon damage (Huffaker et al, 2011; Bartels et al, 2013; Yamaguchi and Huffaker, 2011). Individual PROPEPs have been shown to localize to the cytoplasm or to be associated with the tonoplast, contributing to the assumption that Peps are released into the apoplast either actively as a response to danger signals or passively during damage and loss of cell integrity (Bartels et al, 2013). Once in the apoplast they can reach PEPRs of adjacent cells and trigger and/or amplify immunity
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