Search

Interactions between plants and microbes are ubiquitous. The outcomes of these interactions involve interkingdom communication, with myriad, diverse signals moving between microbes and their potential plant hosts. Years of biochemical, genetic, and molecular biology research have provided an overview of the landscape of the repertoires of effectors and elicitors encoded by microbes that allow them to stimulate and manipulate responses from their potential plant hosts. Similarly, considerable insight into the plant machinery and capacity for responding to microbes has been gained. The advent of new bioinformatics and modeling approaches has greatly contributed to our understanding of how these interactions occur, and it is expected that these tools, coupled with burgeoning genome sequencing data, will eventually allow the prediction of the outcome of these interactions and whether they will result in a relationship that benefits one or both partners. As a complement to these studies, cell biological studies are elucidating how cells in the plant hosts behave in response to microbial signals. Such studies have brought new attention to the indispensable role of the plant endomembrane system in determining the outcome of plant-microbe interactions. This Focus Issue addresses not only how the plant endomembrane acts locally to mediate responses to microbes but, also, the importance of the plant endomembrane beyond the plant cell borders for cross-kingdom effects. [Formula: see text] The author(s) have dedicated the work to the public domain under the Creative Commons CC0 "No Rights Reserved" license by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law, 2023.

Posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) also known as RNA silencing or RNA interference is an evolutionarily conserved innate immunity in eukaryotes that targets the complementary RNA sequences to slice/degrade the target RNA or repress the translation of mRNA. In the past two decades, RNA silencing as an important antiviral mechanism has been studied extensively in plants. Intriguingly, almost every virus encodes at least a viral suppressor of RNA silencing (VSR) to counterattack RNA silencing with many strategies to interfere with different steps of RNA silencing. Therefore, the molecular identification of VSRs and elucidation of their functional mechanisms contribute to a better understanding of host resistance and viral pathogenicity. Here, we describe a protocol for the transient expression-induced gene silencing in 16c GFP transgenic and wild type Nicotiana benthamiana plants, and the suppression of single-stranded GFP and double-stranded GFP induced RNA silencing with a VSR in N. benthamiana plants. This protocol is simple and can serve as a standard for the identification and functional analysis of a VSR., (© 2022. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Viral cell-to-cell movement from the primary infected cells to neighboring cells is an essential step for viruses to establish systemic infection in plants. The classic experimental design for studying this process involves the application of a reporter protein such as β-glucuronidase (GUS), green fluorescent protein (GFP), or monomeric red fluorescent protein (mRFP or mCherry). However, such experimental settings are unable to unambiguously distinguish primary and secondary infected cells. In recent years, we have developed several double-labeling potyvirus infectious clones. Upon introduction of such vectors into plant leaf tissues, primary infected cells emit dual fluorescence (green and red) whereas secondary infected cells emit only green fluorescence. In this chapter, we provide detailed protocols on (1) construction of a GFP and mCherry-tagged turnip mosaic virus infectious clone, (2) delivery of the recombinant viral clones into plant cells by agroinfiltration, (3) confocal imaging of viral cell-to-cell movement, and (4) analysis of viral systemic infection. Using this dual-color imaging system, we have revealed coat protein (CP) is essential for TuMV cell-to-cell movement. This system provides a valuable and robust tool to study plant virus cell-to-cell movement., (© 2022. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

This article is part of the Top 10 Unanswered Questions in MPMI invited review series.The past few decades have seen major discoveries in the field of molecular plant-microbe interactions. As the result of technological and intellectual advances, we are now able to answer questions at a level of mechanistic detail that we could not have imagined possible 20 years ago. The MPMI Editorial Board felt it was time to take stock and reassess. What big questions remain unanswered? We knew that to identify the fundamental, overarching questions that drive our research, we needed to do this as a community. To reach a diverse audience of people with different backgrounds and perspectives, working in different areas of plant-microbe interactions, we queried the more than 1,400 participants at the 2019 International Congress on Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions meeting in Glasgow. This group effort resulted in a list of ten, broad-reaching, fundamental questions that influence and inform our research. Here, we introduce these Top 10 unanswered questions, giving context and a brief description of the issues. Each of these questions will be the subject of a detailed review in the coming months. We hope that this process of reflecting on what is known and unknown and identifying the themes that underlie our research will provide a framework to use going forward, giving newcomers a sense of the mystery of the big questions and inspiring new avenues and novel insights.[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license.

The unfolded protein response (UPR) is crucial to life by regulating the cellular response to the stress in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) imposed by abiotic and biotic cues such as heat shock and viral infection. The inositol requiring enzyme 1 (IRE1) signaling pathway activated by the IRE1-mediated unconventional splicing of HAC1 in yeast, bZIP60 in plants and XBP1 in metazoans, is the most ancient branch of the UPR. In this study, we systematically examined yeast IRE1p-HAC1, plant IRE1A/IRE1B-bZIP60 and human hIRE1-XBP1 pairs. We found that, unlike bZIP60, XBP1 is unable to functionally swap HAC1p in yeast, and that the inter-species heterotypic interactions among HAC1p, bZIP60 and XBP1 are not permitted. These data demonstrate evolutionary divergence of the downstream signaling of IRE1-bZIP. We also discovered that the dual cytosolic domains of plant IRE1s act in vivo in a mechanism consistent with IRE1p and hIRE1, and that plant IRE1B not only interacts with IRE1p but also forms typical IRE1 dynamic foci in yeast. Thus, the upstream components of the IRE1 signaling branch including IRE1 activation and action mechanisms are highly conserved. Taken together these data advance the molecular understanding of evolutionary divergence and conservation of the IRE1 signaling pathway across kingdoms.

Exonuclease-mediated RNA decay in plants is known to be involved primarily in endogenous RNA degradation, and several RNA decay components have been suggested to attenuate RNA silencing possibly through competing for RNA substrates. In this paper, we report that overexpression of key cytoplasmic 5’–3’ RNA decay pathway gene-encoded proteins (5’RDGs) such as decapping protein 2 (DCP2) and exoribonuclease 4 (XRN4) in Nicotiana benthamiana fails to suppress sense transgene-induced post-transcriptional gene silencing (S-PTGS). On the contrary, knock-down of these 5’RDGs attenuates S-PTGS and supresses the generation of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). We show that 5’RDGs degrade transgene transcripts via the RNA decay pathway when the S-PTGS pathway is disabled. Thus, RNA silencing and RNA decay degrade exogenous gene transcripts in a hierarchical and coordinated manner. Moreover, we present evidence that infection by turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) activates RNA decay and 5’RDGs also negatively regulate TuMV RNA accumulation. We reveal that RNA silencing and RNA decay can mediate degradation of TuMV RNA in the same way that they target transgene transcripts. Furthermore, we demonstrate that VPg and HC-Pro, the two known viral suppressors of RNA silencing (VSRs) of potyviruses, bind to DCP2 and XRN4, respectively, and the interactions compromise their antiviral function. Taken together, our data highlight the overlapping function of the RNA silencing and RNA decay pathways in plants, as evidenced by their hierarchical and concerted actions against exogenous and viral RNA, and VSRs not only counteract RNA silencing but also subvert RNA decay to promote viral infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently characterized calmodulin-like protein is an endogenous RNA silencing suppressor that suppresses sense-RNA induced post-transcriptional gene silencing (S-PTGS) and enhances virus infection, but the mechanism underlying calmodulin-like protein-mediated S-PTGS suppression is obscure. Here, we show that a calmodulin-like protein from Nicotiana benthamiana (NbCaM) interacts with Suppressor of Gene Silencing 3 (NbSGS3). Deletion analyses showed that domains essential for the interaction between NbSGS3 and NbCaM are also required for the subcellular localization of NbSGS3 and NbCaM suppressor activity. Overexpression of NbCaM reduced the number of NbSGS3-associated granules by degrading NbSGS3 protein accumulation in the cytoplasm. This NbCaM-mediated NbSGS3 degradation was sensitive to the autophagy inhibitors 3-methyladenine and E64d, and was compromised when key autophagy genes of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) complex were knocked down. Meanwhile, silencing of key autophagy genes within the PI3K complex inhibited geminivirus infection. Taken together these data suggest that NbCaM acts as a suppressor of RNA silencing by degrading NbSGS3 through the autophagy pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling network encompasses two pathways in plants, one mediated by inositol-requiring protein-1 (IRE1)-bZIP60 mRNA and the other by site-1/site-2 proteases (S1P/S2P)-bZIP17/bZIP28. As the major sensor of UPR in eukaryotes, IRE1, in response to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, catalyzes the unconventional splicing of HAC1 in yeast, bZIP60 in plants and XBP1 in metazoans. Recent studies suggest that IRE1p and HAC1 mRNA, the only UPR pathway found in yeast, evolves as a cognate system responsible for the robust UPR induction. However, the functional connectivity of IRE1 and its splicing target in multicellular eukaryotes as well as the degree of conservation of IRE1 downstream signaling effectors across eukaryotes remains to be established. Here, we report that IRE1 and its substrate bZIP60 function as a strictly cognate enzyme-substrate pair to control viral pathogenesis in plants. Moreover, we show that the S1P/S2P-bZIP17/bZIP28 pathway, the other known branch of UPR in plants, does not play a detectable role in virus infection, demonstrating the distinct function of the IRE1-bZIP60 pathway in plants. Furthermore, we provide evidence that bZIP60 and HAC1, products of the enzyme-substrate duet, rather than IRE1, are functionally replaceable to cope with ER stress in yeast. Taken together, we conclude that the downstream signaling of the IRE1-mediated splicing is evolutionarily conserved in yeast and plants, and that the IRE1-bZIP60 UPR pathway not only confers overlapping functions with the other UPR branch in fundamental biology but also may exert a unique role in certain biological processes such as virus-plant interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]