A novel UV-B priming system reveals an UVR8-depedent memory, which provides resistance against UV-B stress in Arabidopsis leaves

Ying Xiong; Qian Xing; Ralf Müller-Xing

doi:10.1080/15592324.2021.1879533

A novel UV-B priming system reveals an UVR8-depedent memory, which provides resistance against UV-B stress in Arabidopsis leaves

Plant Signal Behav. 2021 Apr 3;16(4):1879533. doi: 10.1080/15592324.2021.1879533. Epub 2021 Feb 26.

Authors

Ying Xiong^{1

2}, Qian Xing^{1

2}, Ralf Müller-Xing^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Saline-Alkali Vegetation Ecology Restoration (Northeast Forestry University), Ministry of Education, Harbin, China.
² Plant Epigenetics and Development, Institute of Genetics, College of Life Science, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China.

Abstract

Single treatment of plants with pathogens like Pseudomonas syringae can trigger systemic acquired resistance (SAR) that lasts several days to several weeks in Arabidopsis thaliana. Similar primed resistances were described for abiotic stresses like drought and heat stress. Most studies about plant resistance to ultraviolet (UV)-radiation used low UV-B radiations over a long period. These experimental designs make it difficult to distinguish acclimation effects from real cellular memory which facilitate transcriptional and other responses to a second UV-radiation after a latent phase. Here we present a novel UV-B priming system. We demonstrate that a single UV-B treatment, which causes neither visible damage nor accumulation of pigments, can stimulate resistance against UV-B stress. After a second damaging UV-B treatment, UV-primed plants showed significantly reduced damage in comparison to non-primed plants. Furthermore, the acquirement of the induced UV-B resistance was impaired in uvr8-6 mutants suggesting that the UV-B receptor is essential for UV-B stress memory in Arabidopsis. We discuss advantages and limits of our UV-B priming system which will be a powerful tool to investigate UV-B memory in future studies.

Keywords: Abiotic plant resistance; CHS; NRP1; UVR8; WRKY30; acquired plant resistance; primed genes.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Arabidopsis / metabolism*
Arabidopsis / radiation effects*
Arabidopsis Proteins / metabolism*
Chromosomal Proteins, Non-Histone / metabolism*
Models, Biological
Plant Leaves / metabolism*
Plant Leaves / radiation effects*
Stress, Physiological / radiation effects*
Ultraviolet Rays*

Substances

Arabidopsis Proteins
Chromosomal Proteins, Non-Histone
Uvr8 protein, Arabidopsis

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 31640054 and 31771602), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant No. 2572016DA03) and Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China, General Program (Grant No. C2016007) to QX and RMX. We are also grateful for financial support from the Northeast Forestry University Starting Grant for Distinguished Young Scholar to RMX. Older parts of this study was supported by a FP7 Marie Curie-IEF fellowship (Plant-Memory) of the EU and by a return fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to RMX.