Dynamic ubiquitination determines transcriptional activity of the plant immune coactivator NPR1
- University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Abstract
Activation of systemic acquired resistance in plants is associated with transcriptome reprogramming induced by the unstable coactivator NPR1. Immune-induced ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation of NPR1 are thought to facilitate continuous delivery of active NPR1 to target promoters, thereby maximising gene expression. Because of this potentially costly sacrificial process, we investigated if ubiquitination of NPR1 plays transcriptional roles prior to its proteasomal turnover. Here we show ubiquitination of NPR1 is a progressive event in which initial modification by a Cullin-RING E3 ligase promotes its chromatin association and expression of target genes. Only when polyubiquitination of NPR1 is enhanced by the E4 ligase, UBE4, it is targeted for proteasomal degradation. Conversely, ubiquitin ligase activities are opposed by UBP6/7, two proteasome-associated deubiquitinases that enhance NPR1 longevity. Thus, immune-induced transcriptome reprogramming requires sequential actions of E3 and E4 ligases balanced by opposing deubiquitinases that fine-tune activity of NPR1 without strict requirement for its sacrificial turnover.
Data availability
RNA Seq data have been deposited in Array Express at EMBL-EBIunder accession code E-MTAB-7369.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Royal Society (UF090321)
- Steven H Spoel
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/L006219/1)
- Steven H Spoel
H2020 European Research Council (678511)
- Steven H Spoel
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Skelly 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
-
- 5,161
- views
-
- 826
- downloads
-
- 66
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Citations by DOI
-
- 66
- citations for umbrella DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47005
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)
Dynamic ubiquitination determines transcriptional activity of the plant immune coactivator NPR1
eLife 8:e47005.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47005
