Investigating the functional convergence of pathogen effectors that target TCP transcription factors in Arabidopsis thaliana
P. TEIXEIRA (1), L. Yang (2), P. Epple (3), S. Biswas (4), Y. He (5), O. Finkel (2), M. English (6), P. Mieczkowski (2), P. Braun (7), J. Dangl (2) (1) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A.; (2) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A.; (3) BASF Plant Science, U.S.A.; (4) Harvard Medical School, U.S.A.; (5) North Carolina State University, U.S.A.; (6) University of Tennessee, U.S.A.; (7) Technische Universität München, Germany

The interaction between plants and their pathogens constitutes very dynamic and complex biological systems. In order to promote virulence and establish infection, pathogens modulate plant immunity and physiology using an astounding variety of virulence effectors that can physically interact with host proteins. A plant-pathogen protein interaction network revealed that effectors from three independently evolved pathogens converge onto a limited set of proteins in Arabidopsis. Interestingly, members of the TCP family of transcription factors are the most common targets of effectors, but their functions in the plant immune system remain poorly understood. We found that TCP14 negatively regulates the jasmonic acid branch of immunity and the effector HopBB1 from Pseudomonas syringae mediates its degradation to promote host susceptibility. Still, we do not know whether other effectors that target TCP14 manipulate the plant immune system in an analogous way or whether they diverge at the functional level. To answer this question, a subset of 22 effectors that were confirmed to be re-localized by TCP14 in planta was used in a screening to finely define the region of the TCP14 protein that is targeted by each effector. Moreover, transgenic Arabidopsis lines that express each effector under an inducible promoter are being generated and will be used in RNA-seq and ChIP-seq experiments that aim to determine specific changes in the TCP14 function. We will provide examples of how different effectors may manipulate TCP14.

Abstract Number: P9-311
Session Type: Poster