Evolution of the plant immune signaling network

一旦识别出病原体的攻击，植物就会启动免疫反应来保护自己免受病原体的攻击。免疫信号网络控制着免疫反应。这项研究旨在回答两个问题。(1)现代陆生植物复杂的免疫信号网络是如何在进化过程中产生的？(2)不同开花植物间信号网络的差异性有多大？问题(2)将通过详细比较信号网络如何在三种不同的开花植物物种，番茄，水稻和模式植物拟南芥中运作来回答。这项研究的结果将为复杂的生物系统如何进化提供一个例子。他们还将提供关于如何设计植物免疫信号网络以提高作物抗病能力的想法。作为推广，将开发一个移动温室，用于教三年级学生植物如何适应环境。模式植物拟南芥的免疫信号网络具有很强的抗病原体攻击能力。本研究将探讨在陆地植物的进化过程中，这种高度弹性的信号网络是何时获得的。这将通过询问特定免疫相关亚家族何时在更大的蛋白质家族中实现新功能，并使用不同陆地植物物种蛋白质家族的系统发育分析来实现。亚家族分析方法将自动化并应用于基因组规模，以研究控制各种其他生物过程的网络进化的时间。在被子植物中，关键的网络成分通常是保守的。然而，从来没有研究过网络的状态（网络参数集）是否也是守恒的。本文将比较拟南芥、番茄和水稻三种被子植物的免疫信号网络状态。这将通过使用突变组合干扰关键网络枢纽来实现，使用转录组分析和其他方法测量扰动对免疫反应的影响，并比较三个物种之间关键网络枢纽之间的关系。这项研究将提供一个高度弹性的生物网络是如何进化的见解，并揭示免疫信号网络的结构和状态在被子植物中分化的程度。该项目由植物生物相互作用计划，植物基因组研究计划和系统与合成生物学集群共同资助。

Upon recognition of pathogen attack, plants turn on immune responses to defend themselves from pathogens. The immune signaling network controls the immune response. This research is aimed at answering two questions. (1) How did the sophisticated immune signaling network in contemporary land plants arise during their evolution? (2) How much diversity in the signaling network exists among different flowering plants? Question (2) will be answered by comparing in detail how the signaling network operates in three diverse flowering plant species, tomato, rice, and the model plant Arabidopsis. The results of the research will provide an example of how sophisticated biological systems can evolve. They will also provide ideas about how the plant immune signaling network can be engineered to improve disease resistance in crops. As outreach, a mobile conservatory will be developed and used to teach 3rd grade students about how plants adapt to their environments.The immune signaling network in the model plant Arabidopsis is highly resilient against pathogen attack on its components. This research will investigate when during the evolution of land plants such a highly resilient signaling network was acquired. This will be achieved by interrogating when specific immune-related subfamilies neofunctionalized within larger protein families using phylogenetic analysis of protein families of diverse land plant species. The subfamily analysis method will be automated and applied at the genome scale to investigate the times at which the networks controlling various other biological processes evolved. Key network components are generally conserved among angiosperms. However, it has never been investigated whether the state of a network (the set of network parameters) is also conserved. The immune signaling network state will be compared among three diverse angiosperm species, Arabidopsis, tomato, and rice. It will be achieved by combinatorially perturbing key network hubs using mutations, measuring the effects of the perturbations on the immune response using transcriptome analysis and other methods, and comparing the relationships among the key network hubs among the three species. This research will provide insights into how a highly resilient biological network has evolved and reveal the extent to which the structure and state of the immune signaling network have diverged among angiosperms. This project is co-funded by the Plant Biotic Interactions Program, the Plant Genome Research Program and the Systems and Synthetic Biology Cluster.