Alfalfa snakin-1 prevents fungal colonization and probably coevolved with rhizobia

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Nicolás Daniel Ayub¹  María José Diéguez¹  María Cristina Gómez¹  Gabriela Soto¹  Elba María Pagano¹  Ana Romina Fox¹  Araceli Nora García¹  Jorge Prometeo Muschietti²  Carolina Andrea Berini³ 

[1] De los Reseros S/N, Instituto de Genética Ewald A. Favret (CICVyA-INTA), C25 (1712), Castelar, Buenos Aires, Argentina;Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Intendente Güiraldes 2160, Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellón II, C1428EGA, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina;Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular, “Dr. Hector Torres”, (INGEBI-CONICET), Vuelta de Obligado 2490, C1428ADN, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina;Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y SIDA (INBIRS), UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155, C1121ABG, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina;

关键词: Antimicrobial peptides;    Alfalfa;    Evolution;    Land plants;    Innate immunity;    Snakin;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12870-014-0248-9

 received in 2014-06-20, accepted in 2014-09-11,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe production of antimicrobial peptides is a common defense strategy of living cells against a wide range of pathogens. Plant snakin peptides inhibit bacterial and fungal growth at extremely low concentrations. However, little is known of their molecular and ecological characteristics, including origin, evolutionary equivalence, specific functions and activity against beneficial microbes. The aim of this study was to identify and characterize snakin-1 from alfalfa (MsSN1).ResultsPhylogenetic analysis showed complete congruence between snakin-1 and plant trees. The antimicrobial activity of MsSN1 against bacterial and fungal pathogens of alfalfa was demonstrated in vitro and in vivo. Transgenic alfalfa overexpressing MsSN1 showed increased antimicrobial activity against virulent fungal strains. However, MsSN1 did not affect nitrogen-fixing bacterial strains only when these had an alfalfa origin.ConclusionsThe results reported here suggest that snakin peptides have important and ancestral roles in land plant innate immunity. Our data indicate a coevolutionary process, in which alfalfa exerts a selection pressure for resistance to MsSN1 on rhizobial bacteria. The increased antimicrobial activity against virulent fungal strains without altering the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis observed in MsSN1-overexpressing alfalfa transgenic plants opens the way to the production of effective legume transgenic cultivars for biotic stress resistance.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© García et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.