Journal Article

YODA MAP3K kinase regulates plant immune responses conferring broad-spectrum disease resistance

Gemma López, Dierk Scheel, Antonio Molina, Mariola Piślewska-Bednarek, Sivakumar Pattathil, Shauna Somerville, Viviana Escudero, Yangnan Gu, Michael G. Hahn, Antonio Muñoz-Barrios, Sabine Haigis, Eva Miedes, Sara Sopeña-Torres, Sanjay Swami, Pawel Bednarek, Lucía Jordá, Ines Lassowskat, Justin Lee, Danny Alexander, Clara Sánchez-Rodríguez, Paul Schulze-Lefert

2018

Overview

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) cascades play essential roles in plants by trans-ducing developmental cues and environmental signals into cellular responses. Among the latter are microbe-associated molecular patterns perceived by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which trigger immunity. We found that YODA (YDA) – a MAPK kinase kinase regulating several Arabidopsis developmental processes, like stomatal patterning – also modulates immune responses. Resistance to pathogens is compromised in yda alleles, whereas plants expressing the constitutively active YDA (CA-YDA) protein show broad-spectrum resistance to fungi, bacteria, and oomycetes with different colonization modes. YDA functions in the same pathway as ERECTA (ER) Receptor-Like Kinase, regulating both immunity and stomatal patterning. ER-YDA-mediated immune responses act in parallel to canonical disease resistance pathways regulated by phytohormones and PRRs. CA-YDA plants exhibit altered cell-wall integrity and constitutively express defense-associated genes, including some encoding putative small secreted peptides and PRRs whose impairment resulted in enhanced susceptibility phenotypes. CA-YDA plants show strong reprogramming of their phosphoproteome, which contains protein targets distinct from described MAPKs substrates. Our results suggest that, in addition to stomata development, the ER-YDA pathway regulates an immune surveillance system conferring broad-spectrum disease resistance that is distinct from the canonical pathways mediated by described PRRs and defense hormones.

• Publisher: New Phytologist Trust
• Subject: alleles / Arabidopsis / bacteria / cell wall / disease resistance / ERECTA / fungi / hormones / immune response / mitogen-activated protein kinase / mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase / mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase / mitogen‐activated protein kinases (MAPKs) / monitoring / Oomycetes / pathogens / pattern recognition receptor (PRR) / peptides / phenotype / plant hormones / plant immunity / proteome / receptors / receptor‐like kinase (RLK) / stomata