An evolutionary young defense metabolite influences the root growth of plants via the ancient TOR signaling pathway

  1. Frederikke Gro Malinovsky
  2. Marie-Louise F Thomsen
  3. Sebastian J Nintemann
  4. Lea Møller Jagd
  5. Baptiste Bourgine
  6. Meike Burow
  7. Daniel J Kliebenstein  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  2. University of Lausanne, Switzerland
  3. University of California, Davis, United States

Abstract

To optimize fitness a plant should monitor its metabolism to appropriately control growth and defense. Primary metabolism can be measured by the universally conserved TOR (Target of Rapamycin) pathway to balance growth and development with the available energy and nutrients. Recent work suggests that plants may measure defense metabolites to potentially provide a strategy ensuring fast reallocation of resources to coordinate plant growth and defense. There is little understanding of mechanisms enabling defense metabolite signaling. To identify mechanisms of defense metabolite signaling, we used glucosinolates, an important class of plant defense metabolites. We report novel signaling properties specific to one distinct glucosinolate, 3-hydroxypropylglucosinolate across plants and fungi. This defense metabolite, or derived compounds, reversibly inhibits root growth and development. 3-hydroxypropylglucosinolate signaling functions via genes in the ancient TOR pathway. If this event is not unique, this raises the possibility that other evolutionarily new plant metabolites may link to ancient signaling pathways.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Frederikke Gro Malinovsky

    DynaMo Center, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9833-7968
  2. Marie-Louise F Thomsen

    DynaMo Center, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  3. Sebastian J Nintemann

    DynaMo Center, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  4. Lea Møller Jagd

    DynaMo Center, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  5. Baptiste Bourgine

    Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  6. Meike Burow

    DynaMo Center, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2350-985X
  7. Daniel J Kliebenstein

    Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
    For correspondence
    kliebenstein@ucdavis.edu
    Competing interests
    Daniel J Kliebenstein, Reviewing editor, eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5759-3175

Funding

Danmarks Grundforskningsfond (DNRF99)

  • Frederikke Gro Malinovsky
  • Marie-Louise F Thomsen
  • Sebastian J Nintemann
  • Baptiste Bourgine
  • Meike Burow
  • Daniel J Kliebenstein

National Science Foundation (IOS 13391205)

  • Daniel J Kliebenstein

National Science Foundation (MCB 1330337)

  • Daniel J Kliebenstein

U.S. Department of Agriculture (CA-D-PLS-7033-H)

  • Daniel J Kliebenstein

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2017, Malinovsky 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.

Metrics

  • 3,689
    views
  • 680
    downloads
  • 72
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Frederikke Gro Malinovsky
  2. Marie-Louise F Thomsen
  3. Sebastian J Nintemann
  4. Lea Møller Jagd
  5. Baptiste Bourgine
  6. Meike Burow
  7. Daniel J Kliebenstein
(2017)
An evolutionary young defense metabolite influences the root growth of plants via the ancient TOR signaling pathway
eLife 6:e29353.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29353

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29353