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Overexpression of AtWRKY28 and AtWRKY75 in Arabidopsis enhances resistance to oxalic acid and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum

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Based on Arabidopsis microarray, we found 8 WRKY genes were up-regulated with Oxalic acid (OA) challenge, AtWRKY28 and AtWRKY75 overexpression lines showed enhanced resistance to OA and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum.

Abstract

The WRKY transcription factors are involved in various plant physiological processes and most remarkably in coping with diverse biotic and abiotic stresses. Oxalic acid (OA) is an important pathogenicity-determinant of necrotrophic phytopathogenic fungi, such as Sclerotina sclerotiorum (S. sclerotiorum) and Botrytis cinerea (B. cinerea). The identification of differentially expressed genes under OA stress should facilitate our understanding of the pathogenesis mechanism of OA-producing fungi in host plants, and the mechanism of how plants respond to OA and pathogen infection. Based on Arabidopsis oligo microarray, we found 8 WRKY genes that were up-regulated upon OA challenge. The Arabidopsis plants overexpressing AtWRKY28 and AtWRK75 showed enhanced resistance to OA and S. sclerotiorum simultaneously. Furthermore, our results showed that overexpression of AtWRKY28 and AtWRK75 induced oxidative burst in host plants, which suppressed the hyphal growth of S. sclerotiorum, and consequently inhibited fungal infection. Gene expression profiling indicates that both AtWRKY28 and AtWRKY75 are transcriptional regulators of salicylic acid (SA)- and jasmonic acid/ethylene (JA/ET)-dependent defense signaling pathways, AtWRKY28 and AtWRKY75 mainly active JA/ET pathway to defend Arabidopsis against S. sclerotiorum and oxalic acid stress.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Guangpu Li (University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center) and Prof. Yangdou Wei (Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan) for revising our manuscript, and Wenwei Lin (Texas A&M University) for helpful discussion and comments. This work was supported by Commonweal Specialized Research Fund of China Agriculture (201103016), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30671347 and 30800713), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (20100480710), Fujian Provincial Science Foundation (2012J01079) and Fujian Provincial Training Program for Young Outstanding University Researchers (JA10089).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-pesticide and Chemistry Biology, Ministry of Education, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoting Chen, Jun Liu, Guifang Lin, Airong Wang, Zonghua Wang & Guodong Lu

  2. College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoting Chen, Jun Liu, Guifang Lin & Zonghua Wang

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  1. Xiaoting Chen
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  2. Jun Liu
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  3. Guifang Lin
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  4. Airong Wang
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  5. Zonghua Wang
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  6. Guodong Lu
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Correspondence to Xiaoting Chen or Airong Wang.

Additional information

Communicated by Z.-Y. Wang.

X. Chen and J. Liu contributed equally to this work.

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299_2013_1469_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Fig.S1. Similar responses of Arabidopsis leaves of 4-week-old AtWRKY28, and AtWRKY75 overexpression lines and wild type (Col-0) plants upon inoculation with water droplets at pH 1.7 adjusted by adding hydrochloric acid. (TIFF 1472 kb)

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Chen, X., Liu, J., Lin, G. et al. Overexpression of AtWRKY28 and AtWRKY75 in Arabidopsis enhances resistance to oxalic acid and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum . Plant Cell Rep 32, 1589–1599 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-013-1469-3

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