Project information
The Search for the Alicorn: A multi-omics approach to finding the ideal model plant for elucidating priming phenomenon

Throughout their lives, plants are regularly exposed to numerous stressful situations caused by changing environmental conditions or by interaction with numerous pests and pathogenic microorganisms. Unfortunately, the basal immunity of plants usually only helps to slow down the process of pathogen colonisation and is generally too weak to effectively eradicate the disease. For this reason, widespread infections of crops with plant pathogens have repeatedly resulted in catastrophic crop failures, causing significant economic and social problems worldwide. When plants are exposed to certain chemical compounds, they enter a state of enhanced defence. This state is characterised by a more reliable response of the plant to a stimulus but does not involve as high an energy cost as direct activation of the defence. The molecular mechanism of the defence priming has not yet been fully understood, but the studies have again demonstrated the importance of proper selection and use of model plants.
Our results indicate that the resistance induced by beta-aminobutyric acid (BABA), representing one of the most potent priming agents, in important crop plant tomato seems to be mediated by jasmonic acid rather than by the salicylic acid pathway, which contrasts with previously published results in Arabidopsis model plant. For this reason, we decided to use Arabidopsis in addition to tomato for further studies. We performed a detailed RNAseq analysis of A. thaliana Col-0 plant after treatment with BABA to compare the transcriptomic changes with those in tomato. We identified key transcripts that were differentially expressed in both plants after treatment with BABA. These transcripts are related to plant defence, jasmonic acid, and ethylene signalling, suggesting their key roles in BABA-induced resistance in the Arabidopsis plant. At the same time, our results strongly suggest the involvement of histone deacetylases in BABA-induced resistance. Therefore, we plan to perform Chip-Seq analyses of both Arabidopsis and tomato plants after treatment with BABA to clarify the role of chromatin modification in BABA-induced resistance.