Evolution of herbivore-induced early defense signaling was shaped by genome-wide duplications in Nicotiana
- Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany
- Brigham Young University, United States
- Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany
Abstract
Herbivore-induced defenses are widespread, rapidly evolving and relevant for plant fitness. Such induced defenses are often mediated by early defense signaling (EDS) rapidly activated by the perception of herbivore associated elicitors (HAE) that includes transient accumulations of jasmonic acid (JA). Analyzing 60 HAE-induced leaf transcriptomes from closely-related Nicotiana species revealed a key gene co-expression network (M4 module) which is co-activated with the HAE-induced JA accumulations but is elicited independently of JA, as revealed in plants silenced in JA signaling. Functional annotations of the M4 module were consistent with roles in EDS and a newly identified hub gene of the M4 module (NaLRRK1) mediates a negative feedback loop with JA signaling. Phylogenomic analysis revealed preferential gene retention after genome-wide duplications shaped the evolution of HAE-induced EDS in Nicotiana. These results highlight the importance of genome-wide duplications in the evolution of adaptive traits in plants.
Data availability
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Evolution of the herbivore associated elicitor induced early defence signalling networks in NicotianaPublicly available at the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (accession no: GSE75006).
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Evolution of the herbivore associated elicitor induced early defence signalling networks in NicotianaPublicly available at the NCBI BioProject (accession no: PRJNA301787).
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Tissue specific diurnal rhythm of transcripts and their regulation during herbivore attack in Nicotiana attenuataPublicly available at the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (accession no: GSE30287).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (PEBZP3-142886)
- Shuqing Xu
European Research Council (293926)
- Ian T Baldwin
European Commission (328935)
- Shuqing Xu
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Wenwu Zhou
- Thomas Brockmöller
- Zhihao Ling
- Ashton Omdahl
- Ian T Baldwin
- Shuqing Xu
Sutter-Stötner-Stiftung
- Shuqing Xu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Joerg Bohlmann, University of British Columbia, Canada
Version history
- Received: July 11, 2016
- Accepted: November 1, 2016
- Accepted Manuscript published: November 4, 2016 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: November 18, 2016 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2016, Zhou 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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Evolution of herbivore-induced early defense signaling was shaped by genome-wide duplications in Nicotiana
eLife 5:e19531.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19531
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