Abstract
Insect pests negatively affect crop quality and yield; identifying new methods to protect crops against insects therefore has important agricultural applications. Our analysis of transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants showed that overexpression of PENTACYCLIC TRITERPENE SYNTHASE 1 (PEN1), encoding the key biosynthetic enzyme for the natural plant product (3E)-4,8-dimethyl-1,3,7-nonatriene (DMNT), led to significant resistance against a major insect pest, Plustella xylostella. DMNT treatment severely damaged the peritrophic matrix (PM), a physical barrier isolating food and pathogens from the midgut wall cells. DMNT repressed the expression of PxMucin in midgut cells and knocking down PxMucin resulted in PM rupture and P. xylostella death. A 16S RNA survey revealed that DMNT significantly disrupted midgut microbiota populations and that midgut microbes were essential for DMNT-induced killing. Therefore, we propose that the midgut microbiota assists DMNT in killing P. xylostella. These findings may provide a novel approach for plant protection against P. xylostella.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figure 1-6, Figure 1-figure supplement 1, 3-5, Figure 4-figure supplement 2, Figure 5-figure supplement 2, and Figure 6-figure supplement 2-3.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD0301301)
- Peijin Li
National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0101803)
- Peijin Li
Natural Science Foundation of China (31670264)
- Peijin Li
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Chen 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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Volatile DMNT directly protects plants against Plutella xylostella by disrupting peritrophic matrix barrier in midgut
eLife 10:e63938.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63938
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