Host: The Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists
Pages 0192
In order to robustly execute defense responses against a multitude of pathogens with various defense suppressors, plants have developed a complex and highly interconnected signaling network. To dissect the Arabidopsis defense signaling network, we have employed a reverse genetic approach combined with gene expression profiling. We assayed pathogen-inducible gene expression in a collection of twenty-five Arabidopsis mutants which were predicted to perturb various points in the signaling network. Plant mutants were infected with the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, and gene expression profiles were analyzed using a non-linear dimensionality reduction. By identifying the similarities in expression profiles between mutants, we developed a signaling network model that infers interactions between mutated genes. Using this model, we have developed and tested hypotheses about signal flow through this network including the mode of signal amplification in a subnetwork of salicylate-mediated signaling and mutual inhibition between subnetworks.
