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Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens

BACKGROUND: Plant WRKY DNA-binding transcription factors are involved in plant responses to biotic and abiotic responses. It has been previously shown that Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4, which encode two structurally similar WRKY transcription factors, are induced by pathogen infection and salicylic a...

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Autores principales: Lai, Zhibing, Vinod, KM, Zheng, Zuyu, Fan, Baofang, Chen, Zhixiang
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2464603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18570649
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2229-8-68
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author Lai, Zhibing
Vinod, KM
Zheng, Zuyu
Fan, Baofang
Chen, Zhixiang
author_facet Lai, Zhibing
Vinod, KM
Zheng, Zuyu
Fan, Baofang
Chen, Zhixiang
author_sort Lai, Zhibing
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Plant WRKY DNA-binding transcription factors are involved in plant responses to biotic and abiotic responses. It has been previously shown that Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4, which encode two structurally similar WRKY transcription factors, are induced by pathogen infection and salicylic acid (SA). However, the role of the two WRKY transcription factors in plant disease resistance has not been directly analyzed. RESULTS: Both WRKY3 and WRKY4 are nuclear-localized and specifically recognize the TTGACC W-box sequences in vitro. Expression of WRKY3 and WRKY4 was induced rapidly by stress conditions generated by liquid infiltration or spraying. Stress-induced expression of WRKY4 was further elevated by pathogen infection and SA treatment. To determine directly their role in plant disease resistance, we have isolated T-DNA insertion mutants and generated transgenic overexpression lines for WRKY3 and WRKY4. Both the loss-of-function mutants and transgenic overexpression lines were examined for responses to the biotrophic bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and the necrotrophic fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea. The wrky3 and wrky4 single and double mutants exhibited more severe disease symptoms and support higher fungal growth than wild-type plants after Botrytis infection. Although disruption of WRKY3 and WRKY4 did not have a major effect on plant response to P. syringae, overexpression of WRKY4 greatly enhanced plant susceptibility to the bacterial pathogen and suppressed pathogen-induced PR1 gene expression. CONCLUSION: The nuclear localization and sequence-specific DNA-binding activity support that WRKY3 and WRKY4 function as transcription factors. Functional analysis based on T-DNA insertion mutants and transgenic overexpression lines indicates that WRKY3 and WRKY4 have a positive role in plant resistance to necrotrophic pathogens and WRKY4 has a negative effect on plant resistance to biotrophic pathogens.
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spelling pubmed-24646032008-07-15 Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens Lai, Zhibing Vinod, KM Zheng, Zuyu Fan, Baofang Chen, Zhixiang BMC Plant Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Plant WRKY DNA-binding transcription factors are involved in plant responses to biotic and abiotic responses. It has been previously shown that Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4, which encode two structurally similar WRKY transcription factors, are induced by pathogen infection and salicylic acid (SA). However, the role of the two WRKY transcription factors in plant disease resistance has not been directly analyzed. RESULTS: Both WRKY3 and WRKY4 are nuclear-localized and specifically recognize the TTGACC W-box sequences in vitro. Expression of WRKY3 and WRKY4 was induced rapidly by stress conditions generated by liquid infiltration or spraying. Stress-induced expression of WRKY4 was further elevated by pathogen infection and SA treatment. To determine directly their role in plant disease resistance, we have isolated T-DNA insertion mutants and generated transgenic overexpression lines for WRKY3 and WRKY4. Both the loss-of-function mutants and transgenic overexpression lines were examined for responses to the biotrophic bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and the necrotrophic fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea. The wrky3 and wrky4 single and double mutants exhibited more severe disease symptoms and support higher fungal growth than wild-type plants after Botrytis infection. Although disruption of WRKY3 and WRKY4 did not have a major effect on plant response to P. syringae, overexpression of WRKY4 greatly enhanced plant susceptibility to the bacterial pathogen and suppressed pathogen-induced PR1 gene expression. CONCLUSION: The nuclear localization and sequence-specific DNA-binding activity support that WRKY3 and WRKY4 function as transcription factors. Functional analysis based on T-DNA insertion mutants and transgenic overexpression lines indicates that WRKY3 and WRKY4 have a positive role in plant resistance to necrotrophic pathogens and WRKY4 has a negative effect on plant resistance to biotrophic pathogens. BioMed Central 2008-06-20 /pmc/articles/PMC2464603/ /pubmed/18570649 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2229-8-68 Text en Copyright © 2008 Lai et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lai, Zhibing
Vinod, KM
Zheng, Zuyu
Fan, Baofang
Chen, Zhixiang
Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens
title Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens
title_full Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens
title_fullStr Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens
title_full_unstemmed Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens
title_short Roles of Arabidopsis WRKY3 and WRKY4 Transcription Factors in Plant Responses to Pathogens
title_sort roles of arabidopsis wrky3 and wrky4 transcription factors in plant responses to pathogens
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2464603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18570649
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2229-8-68
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