Gene-to-gene network analysis of the mediation of plant innate immunity by the eliciting plant response-like 1 (Epl1) elicitor of trichoderma formosa
Journal
Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions
Journal Volume
31
Journal Issue
7
Pages
683-691
Date Issued
2018
Author(s)
Cheng C.-H.
Shen B.-N.
Shang Q.-W.
Liu L.-Y.D.
Peng K.-C.
Chen Y.-H.
Chen F.-F.
Hu S.-F.
Wang Y.-T.
Wang H.-C.
Wu H.-Y.
Lo C.-T.
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.
Type
journal article