Components of Fusarium elicitor-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis thaliana

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Understanding the interaction of plants with microbial pathogens is pivotal for managing plant diseases in the field and for improvement of crop plant genotypes to meet the future demand of food security and sustainable productivity. Fusarium species are among the most aggressive fungal pathogens that infect plants, cause yield losses and produce mycotoxins of relevance for human and livestock health. We therefore started investigations for enrichment of molecules from Fusarium species, which are immunogenic on plants in the sense that they elicit canonical early immune responses in Arabidopsis thaliana (pattern-triggered immunity, PTI). Finding and partial enrichment of such molecules enabled us to screen for Arabidopsis mutants with reduced immune responses to these elicitors. Based on our preliminary data, we hypothesize that these mutants are defective in novel core components of plant immunity to Fusarium species. The main objective of the proposed work is to isolate the crucial mutated genes from the two most promising mutants we have identified. We have generated the necessary genetic resources to accomplish this by a complementary strategy of map-based cloning and cloning by sequencing. We will perform sequencing and cloning of candidate mutated genes and validate these using independent T-DNA insertion lines and genetic complementation. We will further evidence the function of corresponding wild type genes in early immune responses and in resistance to Fusarium species. Comparative PTI assays in other plant species and phylogenetic analysis of identified genes will further show whether the identified elicitors and PTI components have a potentially general function in plant immunity.