Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1503773
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Molecular Strategies for Enhancing Plant Defense Against Biotic Stresses View all articles

A large-scale screening identifies receptor-like kinases with common features in kinase domains that are potentially related to disease resistance in planta

Provisionally accepted
YAN HUANG YAN HUANG 1Yuan Yuan Yuan Yuan 1Rongqian Yang Rongqian Yang 1Xiangjian Gou Xiangjian Gou 2Shiping Dai Shiping Dai 1Jun Zhou Jun Zhou 1Jinya Guo Jinya Guo 1Jinbo SHEN Jinbo SHEN 3Yanli Lu Yanli Lu 2Yaxi Liu Yaxi Liu 4*Yi Cai Yi Cai 1*
  • 1 College of Life Science, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya an, China
  • 2 Maize Research Institute of Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 3 State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Silviculture, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
  • 4 State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Exploration and Utilization in Southwest China, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The plant genome encodes a plethora of proteins with structural similarity to animal receptor protein kinases, collectively known as receptor-like protein kinases (RLKs), which predominantly localize to the plasma membrane where they activate their kinase domains to convey extracellular signals to the interior of the cell, playing crucial roles in various signaling pathways. Despite the large number of members within the RLK family, to date, only a few have been identified as pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs), leaving many potential RLKs that could play roles in plant immunity undiscovered. In this study, a recombinant strategy was employed to screen the kinase domains of 133 RLKs in the Arabidopsis genome to determine their involvement in the pathogen-triggered immunity (PTI) pathway. It was found that 24 recombinant RLKs (rRLKs) activated the PTI response in Arabidopsis fls2 mutant protoplasts following flg22 treatment. Consistently, when 6 of these rRLKs were individually expressed in fls2 background, they exhibited diverse PTI signal transduction capabilities via different pathways while all retained membrane localization. Intriguingly, sequence analysis revealed multiple conserved amino acid sites within kinase domains of these experimentally identified immune-related RLKs in Arabidopsis. Importantly, these patterns are also preserved in RLKs involved in PTI in other species. This study, on one hand, identifies common features that theoretically can enhance our understanding of immune-related RLKs and facilitate the discovery of novel immune-related RLKs in the future. On the other hand, it provides experimental evidence for the use of recombinant technique to develop diverse rRLKs for molecular breeding, thereby conferring high resistance to plants without compromising their normal growth and development.

    Keywords: rRLK, Flg22, PTI signal transduction, Plant Immunity, Arabidopsis protoplasts

    Received: 29 Sep 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 HUANG, Yuan, Yang, Gou, Dai, Zhou, Guo, SHEN, Lu, Liu and Cai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Yaxi Liu, State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Exploration and Utilization in Southwest China, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130, Sichuan Province, China
    Yi Cai, College of Life Science, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya an, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.