Abstract
The innate immune system is an ancient and broad-spectrum defense system found in all eukaryotes. The detection of microbial elicitors results in the up-regulation of defense-related genes and the elicitation of inflammatory and apoptotic responses. These innate immune responses are the front-line barrier against disease because they collectively suppress the growth of the vast majority of invading microbes. Despite their critical role, we know remarkably little about the diversity of immune elicitors. To address this paucity, we reasoned that hosts are more likely to evolve recognition to "core" pathogen proteins under strong negative selection for the maintenance of essential cellular functions, whereas repeated exposure to host-defense responses will impose strong positive selective pressure for elicitor diversification to avoid host recognition. Therefore, we hypothesized that novel bacterial elicitors can be identified through these opposing forces of natural selection. We tested this hypothesis by examining the genomes of six bacterial phytopathogens and identifying 56 candidate elicitors that have an excess of positively selected residues in a background of strong negative selection. We show that these positively selected residues are atypically clustered, similar to patterns seen in the few well-characterized elicitors. We then validated selected candidate elicitors by showing that they induce Arabidopsis thaliana innate immunity in functional (virulence suppression) and cellular (callose deposition) assays. These finding provide targets for the study of host-pathogen interactions and applied research into alternative antimicrobial treatments.
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Claims 3
Claim · model-written summary
Examination of the genomes of six bacterial phytopathogens identified 56 candidate elicitors with an excess of positively selected residues against a background of strong negative selection.
Verbatim
e1“examining the genomes of six bacterial phytopathogens and identifying 56 candidate elicitors that have an excess of positively selected residues in a background of strong negative selection”
Claim · model-written summary
The positively selected residues of the candidate elicitors were atypically clustered, similar to the few well-characterized elicitors.
Verbatim
e1“examining the genomes of six bacterial phytopathogens and identifying 56 candidate elicitors that have an excess of positively selected residues in a background of strong negative selection”
e2“these positively selected residues are atypically clustered”
Claim · model-written summary
Selected candidate elicitors induced Arabidopsis thaliana innate immunity in virulence suppression and callose deposition assays.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis thaliana
Arabidopsis thalianae3 - Treatment
- candidate elicitorse3
- Outcome
- innate immunitye3
- Direction
- inducee3
- Qualifier
- functional (virulence suppression) and cellular (callose deposition) assayse3
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e3“selected candidate elicitors by showing that they induce Arabidopsis thaliana innate immunity in functional (virulence suppression) and cellular (callose deposition) assays”
The same questions in other papers
resistance inducer · disease · Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress)Positive and negative results
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- no effect
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2 papers more in this group
See all 6 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.