Plants are continuously exposed to different abiotic and biotic stresses in their natural environment. Their capacity to survive depends on the capacity to perceive external signal and quality amount a defence response for protection from the stress perceived. The purpose of this project was to study the impact of combined abiotic stress and biotic stress on the outcome of the disease inducing Arabidopsis thaliana – Pseudomonas syringae interaction. This study included a focus on the role of ABA in these interactions and also whether 3´-O-β D- ribofuranosyl adenosine (hereafter it called ‘400’ compound), a novel adenosine derived compound induced during compatible interactions, was involved. The later involved the targetted disruption of a putative 400 biosynthetic pathway involving analysis of knockout mutants of enzymes; APD-ribose diphosphatase NAD binding / hydrolases of the NUDIX class, glucosyl transferases, ribosyltransferases, a ribose-phosphate pyrophosphokinase3 and galactosyltransferases. Unfortunately, none of these targeted interventions modified the host response to Pseudomonas infection, nor altered levels of 400 in challenged leaves. The primary research investigated the interaction between abiotic and biotic stresses in Arabidopsis plants focussing on the modulation of plant defence against multiple, and possibly antagonistic, stress responses and the role plant hormones play in this process. We showed that high light caused enhanced susceptibility to the already virulent Pseudomonas syringae DC3000pvsp61. The pathways contributing to this enhanced susceptibility were largely ABA independent. Subsequent characterization of transgenic lines expressing the soluble Arabidopsis abscisic acid receptors, PYRABACTIN RESISTANCE1-LIKE4-6 provided compelling evidence for a role for these receptors in DC3000 virulence strategies, but they contribute to a lesser extent to the enhanced susceptibility under high light. This was corroborated genetically by using mutants of the immediately downstream targets of PYLs, the type two protein phosphatase, specifically the triple mutant hab1-1/abi2-1/abi1-2. A number of epitope and fluorescent constructs were generated to facilitate future studies of the role of ABA signaling. Targetted profiling suggested that SA dynamics were altered under DC3000 challenged Arabidopsis grown under high light. Furthermore, differential accumulation of flavonoids suggested these may also play a role in attenuating host defences under high light. Finally we provide evidence based on comparative analysis of that the photoreceptors phytochrome double mutant phyA-211/phyB-9 and cry1/cry2 behave antagonistically in Arabidopsis response to DC3000. Overall our studies support the conclusion that plants abiotic stress (HL) response takes precedence over biotic stress (DC3000) responses and that abiotic stress is detrimental to plant immunity. The luciferase transgenic PYL lines showed high level of expression of ClucP::PYL5 plant tissues challenged 2hpi of DC3000 (OD600: 0.15) in comparison with C1lucP::PYL6. This result opposes to what RT-PCR reported; which was that three PYLs genes display similar expression level at 6hpi of hrpA or 18hpi of DC3000. The epitope tags of CaMV::HA transgenic plants showed HA-tagged signal with stunted phenotype in a range of PYL4, 5 and 6 plants but none of the plants displayed any differences in susceptibility to DC3000. Although, RT-PCR assay showed high levels of expression in the three PYLs, 6hpi of hrpA but no signal was detected in B8eGFP::PYL5 transgenic line either followed the DC3000 and hrpA infection or by examined plant seedlings at early stages under confocal microscopy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:586637 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Alzwiy, Ibrahim A. Mohamed |
| Contributors | Grant, Murray |
| Publisher | University of Exeter |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/13946 |
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