1. Plant Biology
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Negative regulation of ABA signaling by WRKY33 is critical for Arabidopsis immunity towards Botrytis cinerea 2100

  1. Shouan Liu
  2. Barbara Kracher
  3. Joerg Ziegler
  4. Rainer P Birkenbihl
  5. Imre E Somssich  Is a corresponding author
  1. Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Germany
  2. Leibnitz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany
Research Article
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Cite this article as: eLife 2015;4:e07295 doi: 10.7554/eLife.07295

Abstract

The Arabidopsis mutant wrky33 is highly susceptible to Botrytis cinerea. We identified >1680 Botrytis-induced WRKY33 binding sites associated with 1576 Arabidopsis genes. Transcriptional profiling defined 318 functional direct target genes at 14 h post inoculation. Comparative analyses revealed that WRKY33 possess dual functionality acting either as a repressor or as an activator in a promoter-context dependent manner. We confirmed known WRKY33 targets involved in hormone signaling and phytoalexin biosynthesis, but also uncovered a novel negative role of abscisic acid (ABA) in resistance towards B. cinerea 2100. The ABA biosynthesis genes NCED3 and NCED5 were identified as direct targets required for WRKY33-mediated resistance. Loss-of-WRKY33 function resulted in elevated ABA levels and genetic studies confirmed that WRKY33 acts upstream of NCED3/NCED5 to negatively regulate ABA biosynthesis. This study provides the first detailed view of the genome-wide contribution of a specific plant transcription factor in modulating the transcriptional network associated with plant immunity.

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Author details

  1. Shouan Liu

    Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Köln, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Barbara Kracher

    Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Köln, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Joerg Ziegler

    Department of Molecular Signal Processing,, Leibnitz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Halle, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Rainer P Birkenbihl

    Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Köln, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Imre E Somssich

    Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Köln, Germany
    For correspondence
    somssich@mpipz.mpg.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Jean T Greenberg, University of Chicago, United States

Publication history

  1. Received: March 3, 2015
  2. Accepted: June 13, 2015
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: June 15, 2015 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: July 1, 2015 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2015, 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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