ATG4 Mediated Psm ES4326 /AvrRpt2-Induced Autophagy Dependent on Salicylic Acid in Arabidopsis Thaliana

Abstract

Psm ES4326/AvrRpt2 (AvrRpt2) was widely used as the reaction system of hypersensitive response (HR) in Arabidopsis. The study showed that in npr1 (GFP-ATG8a), AvrRpt2 was more effective at inducing the production of autophagosome and autophagy flux than that in GFP-ATG8a. The mRNA expression of ATG1, ATG6 and ATG8a were more in npr1 during the early HR. Based on transcriptome data analysis, enhanced disease susceptibility 1 (EDS1) was up-regulated in wild-type (WT) but was not induced in atg4a4b (ATG4 deletion mutant) during AvrRpt2 infection. Compared with WT, atg4a4b had higher expression of salicylic acid glucosyltransferase 1 (SGT1) and isochorismate synthase 1 (ICS1); but less salicylic acid (SA) in normal condition and the same level of free SA during AvrRpt2 infection. These results suggested that the consumption of free SA should be occurred in atg4a4b. AvrRpt2 may trigger the activation of Toll/Interleukin-1 receptor (TIR)-nucleotide binding site (NB)-leucine rich repeat (LRR)-TIR-NB-LRR-to induce autophagy via EDS1, which was inhibited by nonexpressor of PR genes 1 (NPR1). Moreover, high expression of NPR3 in atg4a4b may accelerate the degradation of NPR1 during AvrRpt2 infection.

Keywords: autophagy; enhanced disease susceptibility (EDS1); nonexpressor of PR genes 1 (NPR1); salicylic acid (SA).