570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie
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Background
The Arabidopsis CONSTITUTIVE EXPRESSER of PATHOGENESIS-RELATED GENES 5 (CPR5) has recently been shown to play a role in gating as part of the nuclear pore complex (NPC). Mutations in CPR5 cause multiple defects, including aberrant trichomes, reduced ploidy levels, reduced growth and enhanced resistance to bacterial and fungal pathogens. The pleiotropic nature of cpr5 mutations implicates that the CPR5 protein affects multiple pathways. However, little is known about the structural features that allow CPR5 to affect the different pathways.
Results
Our in silico studies suggest that in addition to three clusters of putative nuclear localization signals and four or five transmembrane domains, CPR5 contains two putative alternative translation start sites. To test the role of the methionine-encoding nucleotides implicated in those sites, metCPR5 cDNAs, in which the relevant nucleotides were changed to encode glutamine, were fused to the CPR5 native promoter and the constructs transformed to cpr5-2 plants to complement cpr5-compromised phenotypes. The control and metCPR5 constructs were able to complement all cpr5 phenotypes, although the extent of complementation depended on the specific complementing plant lines. Remarkably, plants transformed with metCPR5 constructs showed larger leaves and displayed reduced resistance when challenged to Pseudomonas syringae pv Pst DC3000, as compared to control plants. Thus, the methionine-encoding nucleotides regulate growth and resistance. We propose that structural features of the CPR5 N-terminus are implicated in selective gating of proteins involved in regulating the balance between growth and resistance.
Conclusion
Plants need to carefully balance the amount of resources used for growth and resistance. The Arabidopsis CPR5 protein regulates plant growth and immunity. Here we show that N-terminal features of CPR5 are involved in the regulation of the balance between growth and resistance. These findings may benefit efforts to improve plant yield, while maintaining optimal levels of disease resistance.
Aims Plants directly and indirectly interact with many abiotic and biotic soil components. Research so far mostly focused on direct, individual abiotic or biotic effects on plant growth, but only few studies tested the indirect effects of abiotic soil factors on plant growth. Therefore, we investigated how abiotic soil conditions affect plant performance, via changes induced by soil biota. Methods In a full-factorial experiment, we grew the widespread grass Dactylis glomerata either with or without soil biota and investigated the impact of soil temperature, fertility and moisture on the soil biota effects on plant growth. We measured biomass production, root traits and colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi as well as microbial respiration. Important Findings We found significant interaction effects between abiotic soil conditions and soil biota on plant growth for fertility, but especially for soil temperature, as an increase of 10 degrees C significantly changed the soil biota effects on plant growth from positive to neutral. However, if tested individually, an increase in soil temperature and fertility per se positively affected plant biomass production, whereas soil biota per se did not affect overall plant growth, but both influenced root architecture. By affecting soil microbial activity and root architecture, soil temperature might influence both mutualistic and pathogenic interactions between plants and soil biota. Such soil temperature effects should be considered in soil feedback studies to ensure greater transferability of results from artificial and experimental conditions to natural environmental conditions.