Mardi 30 Octobre 10h30 salle de conférences INRA, 17 rue Sully, Dijon

“Receptor kinase-mediated innate immunity in plants”

Cyril Zipfel
The Sainsbury Laboratory,
Norwich Research Park, Norwich, UK.

Abstract

The first layer of plant innate immunity relies on the recognition of microbes via the perception of pathogen-/microbe-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs/MAMPs) by surface localized receptors called pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). Plant PRRs are either receptor kinases (RKs) or receptor-like proteins (RLPs). Successful pathogens must actively suppress or evade PAMP-triggered immunity to cause disease, demonstrating the relevance of this recognition and subsequent signalling events for overall disease resistance.

In the plant model Arabidopsis thaliana, the leucine-rich repeat RKs (LRR-RKs) FLS2 and EFR are the PRRs for bacterial flagellin and elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu), respectively. Loss of FLS2 and/or EFR function leads to enhanced disease susceptibility to adapted and non-adapted bacteria, highlighting the importance of these PRRs for anti-bacterial immunity.  Recently, we have also shown that transfer of EFR across plant families can be used as a novel biotechnological strategy to engineer durable broad-spectrum disease resistance against bacteria.

My laboratory is primarily interested in the molecular events governing PAMP-triggered immunity using FLS2 and EFR as working models. I will present recent results highlighting the role of regulatory LRR-RKs and associated phosphorylation events in signalling initiation and specificity downstream of FLS2 and EFR. In addition, I will present evidence for trade-off between immunity and growth mediated by different LRR-RKs.