Silencing GmATG10 results in activation of immune responses in soybean

Abstract

Autophagy is a highly conserved mechanism for material degradation and recycling in eukaryote cells, and plays important roles in growth, development, stress tolerance and immune responses. ATG10 plays a key role in autophagosome formation. To understand the function of ATG10 in soybean, two homologous GmATG10 genes, namely GmATG10a and GmATG10b, were silenced simultaneously by bean pod mottle virus (BPMV) induced gene silencing. The carbon starvation induced by dark treatment and Western blotting analysis of GmATG8 accumulation level indicated that concurrent silencing GmATG10a/10b resulted in the impairment of autophagy in soybean; disease resistance and kinase assays demonstrated that GmATG10a/10b participated in the immune responses by negatively regulating the activation of GmMPK3/6, indicating that GmATG10a/10b plays a negative regulatory role in immune response in soybean.