PAD4 Plant Immunity Gene Discovery
Plants are inevitably challenged by pathogens, therefore relying on a complex innate immune system to recognize and turn on immunity against them. One mode of innate plant immunity is effector-triggered immunity (ETI). In Arabidopsis thaliana, four signaling sectors contribute to this network: jasmonate (JA), salicylate (SA), ethylene (ET) and PAD4. Although the removal of each sector one by one has little effect on ETI, simultaneous removal of the four sectors abolishes ETI. The intact PAD4 sector is sufficient to restore ETI when the other three sectors are removed (“the triple mutant”), indicating the importance of the PAD4 sector in ETI signaling. The goal of this project is to identify novel PAD4 molecular components involved in ETI by screening Arabidopsis mutants that lost the ETI response in the triple mutant background. Thus far, 5,600 plants have been screened, leading to the identification of 6 mutants. Among the isolated mutants, those with novel gene mutations will be subjected to identification of the causal mutations by bulk segregant sequencing analysis.