Host-induced bacterial cell wall decomposition mediates pattern-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis
- University of Tübingen, Germany
- University of Liege-Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Belgium
Abstract
Peptidoglycans (PGN) are immunogenic bacterial surface patterns that trigger immune activation in metazoans and plants. It is generally unknown, how complex bacterial structures, such as PGN, are perceived by plant pattern recognition receptors (PRR) and whether host hydrolytic activities facilitate decomposition of bacterial matrices and generation of soluble PRR ligands. Here, we show that Arabidopsis thaliana upon bacterial infection or exposure to microbial patterns produces a metazoan lysozyme-like hydrolase (lysozyme 1, LYS1). LYS1 activity releases soluble PGN fragments from insoluble bacterial cell walls and cleavage products are able to trigger responses typically associated with plant immunity. Importantly, LYS1 mutant genotypes exhibit super-susceptibility to bacterial infections similar to that observed on PGN receptor mutants. We propose that plants employ hydrolytic activities for the decomposition of complex bacterial structures, and that soluble pattern generation might aid PRR-mediated immune activation in cell layers adjacent to infection sites.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Jean T Greenberg, University of Chicago, United States
Version history
- Received: December 2, 2013
- Accepted: June 20, 2014
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 23, 2014 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 22, 2014 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2014, Liu et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Host-induced bacterial cell wall decomposition mediates pattern-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis
eLife 3:e01990.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01990
