Gene-to-Gene Network Analysis of the Mediation of Plant Innate Immunity by the Eliciting Plant Response-Like 1 (Epl1) Elicitor of Trichoderma formosa

Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 2018 Jul;31(7):683-691. doi: 10.1094/MPMI-01-18-0002-TA. Epub 2018 May 30.

Abstract

A new clade, Trichoderma formosa, secretes eliciting plant response-like 1 (Epl1), a small peptide elicitor that stimulates plant immunity. Nicotiana benthamiana pretreated with Epl1 for 3 days developed immunity against Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV) infection. The transcriptome profiles of T. formosa and N. benthamiana were obtained by deep sequencing; the transcript of Epl1 is 736 nt in length and encodes a 12-kDa peptide. Identifying critical genes in Epl1-mediated immunity was challenging due to high similarity between the transcriptome expression profiles of Epl1-treated and ToMV-infected N. benthamiana samples. Therefore, an efficient bioinformatics data mining approach was used for high-throughput transcriptomic assays in this study. We integrated gene-to-gene network analysis into the ContigViews transcriptome database, and genes related to jasmonic acid and ethylene signaling, salicylic acid signaling, leucine-rich repeats, transcription factors, and histone variants were hubs in the gene-to-gene networks. In this study, the Epl1 of T. formosa triggers plant immunity against various pathogen infections. Moreover, we demonstrated that high-throughput data mining and gene-to-gene network analysis can be used to identify critical candidate genes for further studies on the mechanisms of plant immunity.

MeSH terms

  • Base Sequence
  • DNA, Fungal
  • Fungal Proteins / metabolism
  • Fungal Proteins / pharmacology*
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / immunology
  • Gene Regulatory Networks*
  • Immunity, Innate
  • Models, Molecular
  • Nicotiana / genetics
  • Nicotiana / immunology
  • Nicotiana / metabolism*
  • Phylogeny
  • Plant Diseases / immunology*
  • Plant Immunity / genetics*
  • Plant Proteins / genetics
  • Protein Conformation
  • Trichoderma / genetics
  • Trichoderma / immunology*

Substances

  • DNA, Fungal
  • Fungal Proteins
  • Plant Proteins