Abstract
BackgroundPlant cell walls participate in all plant-environment interactions. Maintaining cell wall integrity (CWI) during these interactions is essential. This realization led to increased interest in CWI and resulted in knowledge regarding early perception and signalling mechanisms active during CWI maintenance. By contrast, knowledge regarding processes mediating changes in cell wall metabolism upon CWI impairment is very limited.ResultsTo identify genes involved and to investigate their contributions to the processes we selected 23 genes with altered expression in response to CWI impairment and characterized the impact of T-DNA insertions in these genes on cell wall composition using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. Insertions in 14 genes led to cell wall phenotypes detectable by FTIR. A detailed analysis of four genes found that their altered expression upon CWI impairment is dependent on THE1 activity, a key component of CWI maintenance. Phenotypic characterizations of insertion lines suggest that the four genes are required for particular aspects of CWI maintenance, cell wall composition or resistance to Plectosphaerella cucumerina infection in adult plants.ConclusionTaken together, the results implicate the genes in responses to CWI impairment, cell wall metabolism and/or pathogen defence, thus identifying new molecular components and processes relevant for CWI maintenance.
Highlights
Plant cell walls participate in all plant-environment interactions
The phenotypic characterization of seedlings detected lignin deposition in root tips and enhanced jasmonic acid (JA) production after 4–6 h of ISX-treatment [48]. Based on these results we hypothesized that genes exhibiting transcriptional changes after 4 h might be involved in cell wall damage (CWD) responses as well as cell wall modifying processes in general
We used public expression data to identify genes exhibiting differential expression after 4 h of ISX treatment and elevated expression in tissue types where cell wall modification or production occurs preferentially. To determine whether these candidates are involved in cell wall related processes, we decided to perform a pilot study characterizing the phenotypes of T-DNA insertion lines for 23 candidate genes
Summary
Maintaining cell wall integrity (CWI) during these interactions is essential This realization led to increased interest in CWI and resulted in knowledge regarding early perception and signalling mechanisms active during CWI maintenance. Examples include pathogen infection or exposure to drought, where wall composition and structure change to prevent water loss, pathogen susceptibility or at least limit further pathogen spread [1, 2]. These changes of the walls are exemplified. Engelsdorf et al BMC Plant Biology (2019) 19:320 These examples illustrate processes active during plantenvironment interactions and development, enabling cell walls to fulfill their respective biological functions. Established responses to CWD include growth inhibition involving cell cycle arrest, changes in the levels of phytohormones like jasmonic acid (JA), salicylic acid (SA) and cytokinins (CKs) as well as changes in cell wall composition involving pectic polysaccharides, lignin and Callose deposition [20,21,22,23,24]
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