title: Monitoring the switch from housekeeping to pathogen defense metabolism in Arabidopsis thaliana using cDNA arrays.
abstract: Plants respond to pathogen attack by deploying several defense reactions. Some rely on the activation of preformed components, whereas others depend on changes in transcriptional activity. Using cDNA arrays comprising 13,000 unique expressed sequence tags, changes in the transcriptome of Arabidopsis thaliana were monitored after attempted infection with the bacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato carrying the avirulence gene avrRpt2. Sampling at four time points during the first 24 h after infiltration revealed significant changes in the steady state transcript levels of approximately 650 genes within 10 min and a massive shift in gene expression patterns by 7 h involving approximately 2,000 genes representing many cellular processes. This shift from housekeeping to defense metabolism results from changes in regulatory and signaling circuits and from an increased demand for energy and biosynthetic capacity in plants fighting off a pathogenic attack. Concentrating our detailed analysis on the genes encoding enzymes in glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, the pentose phosphate pathway, the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids, phenylpropanoids, and ethylene, we observed interesting differential regulation patterns. Furthermore, our data showed potentially important changes in areas of metabolism, such as the glyoxylate metabolism, hitherto not suspected to be components of plant defense.
authors.affiliation: Functional Genome Analysis and Theoretical Bioinformatics, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scheideler
authors.forename: Nikolaus L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Schlaich
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fellenberg
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beissbarth
authors.forename: Nicole C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Hauser
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vingron
authors.forename: Alan J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Slusarenko
authors.forename: Jorg D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Hoheisel
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000382:microbiology*; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000378:metabolism*; D015536:Down-Regulation; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D008027:Light; D008954:Models, Biological; D009693:Nucleic Acid Hybridization; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010935:Plant Diseases; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011549:Pseudomonas / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism; D013997:Time Factors; D014158:Transcription, Genetic; D015854:Up-Regulation; D014774:Virulence / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D018076:DNA, Complementary; D012333:RNA, Messenger