Isoleucine Enhances Plant Resistance Against Botrytis cinerea via Jasmonate Signaling Pathway

Yuwen Li; Suhua Li; Ran Du; Jiaojiao Wang; Haiou Li; Daoxin Xie; Jianbin Yan

doi:10.3389/fpls.2021.628328

Isoleucine Enhances Plant Resistance Against Botrytis cinerea via Jasmonate Signaling Pathway

Front Plant Sci. 2021 Aug 19:12:628328. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2021.628328. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yuwen Li¹, Suhua Li^{2

3}, Ran Du^{2

3}, Jiaojiao Wang¹, Haiou Li^{1

4}, Daoxin Xie¹, Jianbin Yan^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Science, and MOE Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
² Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
³ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Agricultural Synthetic Biology, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
⁴ Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Phytohormones and Growth Development, College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China.

Abstract

Amino acids are the building blocks of biomacromolecules in organisms, among which isoleucine (Ile) is the precursor of JA-Ile, an active molecule of phytohormone jasmonate (JA). JA is essential for diverse plant defense responses against biotic and abiotic stresses. Botrytis cinerea is a necrotrophic nutritional fungal pathogen that causes the second most severe plant fungal disease worldwide and infects more than 200 kinds of monocot and dicot plant species. In this study, we demonstrated that Ile application enhances plant resistance against B. cinerea in Arabidopsis, which is dependent on the JA receptor COI1 and the jasmonic acid-amido synthetase JAR1. The mutant lib with higher Ile content in leaves exhibits enhanced resistance to B. cinerea infection. Furthermore, we found that the exogenous Ile application moderately enhanced plant resistance to B. cinerea in various horticultural plant species, including lettuce, rose, and strawberry, suggesting a practical and effective strategy to control B. cinerea disease in agriculture. These results together showed that the increase of Ile could positively regulate the resistance of various plants to B. cinerea by enhancing JA signaling, which would offer potential applications for crop protection.

Keywords: Botrytis cinerea; COI1; JA-Ile; JAR1; isoleucine.