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PLANTS INTERACTING WITH OTHER ORGANISMS

A Single Binding Site Mediates Resistance- and Disease-Associated Activities of the Effector Protein NIP1 from the Barley Pathogen Rhynchosporium secalis¹

Department of Stress and Developmental Biology, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, D–06210 Halle, Germany

The effector protein NIP1 from the barley (Hordeum vulgare) pathogen Rhynchosporium secalis specifically induces the synthesis of defense-related proteins in cultivars of barley expressing the complementary resistance gene, Rrs1. In addition, it stimulates the activity of the barley plasma membrane H⁺-ATPase in a genotype-unspecific manner and it induces necrotic lesions in leaf tissues of barley and other cereal plant species. NIP1 variants type I and II, which display quantitative differences in their activities as elicitor and H⁺-ATPase stimulator, and the inactive mutant variants type III* and type IV*, were produced in Escherichia coli. Binding studies using ¹²⁵I-NIP1 type I revealed a single class of binding sites with identical binding characteristics in microsomes from near-isogenic resistant (Rrs1) and susceptible (rrs1) barley. Binding was specific, reversible, and saturable, and saturation ligand-binding experiments yielded a K_d of 5.6 nM. A binding site was also found in rye (Secale cereale) and the nonhost species wheat (Triticum aestivum), oat (Avena sativa), and maize (Zea mays), but not in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). For NIP1 types I and II, equilibrium competition-binding experiments revealed a correlation between the difference in their affinities to the binding site and the differences in their elicitor activity and H⁺-ATPase stimulation, indicating a single target molecule to mediate both activities. In contrast, the inactive proteins type III* and type IV* are both characterized by high affinities similar to type I, suggesting that binding of NIP1 to this target is not sufficient for its activities.

The author responsible for distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors (www.plantphysiol.org) is: Wolfgang Knogge (wknogge{at}ipb-halle.de).

www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.106.094912

^* Corresponding author; e-mail wknogge{at}ipb-halle.de; fax 49–345–55821409.

Received December 18, 2006; accepted April 30, 2007; published May 3, 2007.