Abstract
Housaku Monogatari (HM) is a plant activator prepared from a yeast cell wall extract. We examined the efficacy of HM application and observed that HM treatment increased the resistance of Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica rapa leaves to bacterial and fungal infections. HM reduced the severity of bacterial leaf spot and anthracnose on A. thaliana and Brassica crop leaves with protective effects. In addition, gene expression analysis of A. thaliana plants after treatment with HM indicated increased expression of several plant defense-related genes. HM treatment appears to induce early activation of jasmonate/ethylene and late activation of salicylic acid (SA) pathways. Analysis using signaling mutants revealed that HM required SA accumulation and SA signaling to facilitate resistance to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. maculicola and the fungal pathogen Colletotrichum higginsianum. In addition, HM-induced resistance conferred chitin-independent disease resistance to bacterial pathogens in A. thaliana. These results suggest that HM contains multiple microbe-associated molecular patterns that activate defense responses in plants. These findings suggest that the application of HM is a useful tool that may facilitate new disease control methods.
Highlights
In nature, numerous potential pathogens such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses continually attack plants; disease development remains the exception
To determine whether Housaku Monogatari (HM) acts as an inducer of induced resistance in Arabidopsis thaliana, we investigated the expression profile of defense-related genes in response to HM treatment in A. thaliana Col-0 plants by quantitative real time-polymerase chain reaction
The mode of action of yeast cell wall extract (YCWE) is not well known in plants; we analyzed the protective effect of this product against bacterial and fungal pathogens in A. thaliana and Brassica plants
Summary
Numerous potential pathogens such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses continually attack plants; disease development remains the exception. Plants are immune to most potential pathogens; this characteristic is referred to as a “nonhost resistance.”. They have the ability to reduce the disease severity of actual pathogens. Plant innate immune responses to pathogens consist of a two-layer surveillance system that comprises pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and intracellular nucleotide binding-leucine rich repeat (NLR) proteins, which are encoded by R (resistance) genes [1]. PRRs, which are localized on the surface of PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0115864. PRRs, which are localized on the surface of PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0115864 January 7, 2015
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