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Plant Physiology 135:695-701 (2004) © 2004 American Society of Plant Biologists Guarding the Goods. New Insights into the Central Alarm System of Plants1Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 474057107
The discovery that one's kitchen has been invaded by mice is often made indirectly. The holes chewed in the muesli bag and the teeth marks on the corn flakes box are a dead give away. Although you have not seen the mouse, you deploy your defensive weapons, and if successful, succeed in protecting your valuable goods from the invasion, hopefully before all of your food has been eaten. Recent research results indicate that plants also make use of such indirect surveillance systems to protect themselves from being consumed by pathogens. Rather than wait for a direct observation of the pest, plants appear to activate their defenses as soon as pathogen-induced damage is detected. As I describe in this Update, recent work in Arabidopsis has provided compelling evidence that such indirect surveillance may be the rule, rather than the exception, when it comes to plant alarm systems.
The idea that plants may detect pathogens by indirect mechanisms is still relatively new (van der Biezen and Jones, 1998b) and goes against dogma that has pervaded the plant pathology field for decades. This dogma posited that plants detected pathogens using receptors that directly bound pathogen-derived elicitor molecules (Gabriel and Rolfe, 1990
Over 40 R genes with recognition specificity for specific pathogen strains have been isolated from 10 plant species, including both monocots and dicots (for review, see Martin et al., 2003
Of the four classes of plant R genes, the NB-LRR class is by far the largest. R genes in this class have been shown to confer resistance to viral, bacterial, oomycete, and fungal pathogens, and even to nematodes and aphids (Martin et al., 2003
NB-LRR proteins lack obvious transmembrane domains or signal peptides and are presumed to be located in the plant cell cytoplasm. A cytoplasmic location for plant R proteins came as a surprise, initially, as most models had predicted them to be cell surface receptors. However, it was soon established that plant bacterial pathogens use a type III secretion system (TTSS) to translocate avirulence proteins into host cells (Alfano and Collmer, 1996
Most recently, similar experiments with Avr proteins from Flor's flax rust pathogen have revealed that these are also detected from inside plant cells (Dodds et al., 2004
Why do bacterial pathogens translocate avirulence proteins into plant cells? We now know that avirulence proteins simply represent a small subset of the cocktail of proteins that are injected into host cells via the type III secretion system (Buell et al., 2003
The realization that plants have a limited repertoire of R genes, and that pathogen avirulence proteins are effectors that target host cell processes led to the development of a new model for R protein function dubbed the guard hypothesis (van der Biezen and Jones, 1998b). The authors suggested that NB-LRR genes function to guard the targets of pathogen virulence proteins. According to this model, pathogen effectors target host cell proteins in order to suppress defense responses or elicit susceptible responses (e.g. leakage of water and nutrients). NB-LRR proteins evolved as a counter-defense and function to monitor the status of the effector targets. For example, effectors could cause an allosteric change in their targets that promote binding by the NB-LRR protein, which in turn triggers the HR. Since the potential targets of pathogen virulence proteins are probably quite limited, this model would explain how a plant can detect thousands of pathogens with only few hundred R genes.
Evidence in support of the guard model has been mounting in the last 2 years, particularly for the recognition of P. syringae avirulence proteins. For example, recognition of the AvrPto protein by tomato requires the Pto gene, which encodes a protein kinase, and Prf, which encodes an NB-LRR protein. According to the guard model, Pto would represent the target and Prf the guard. Consistent with this, AvrPto physically interacts with Pto in a yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) two-hybrid assay (Tang et al., 1996
A second example that supports the guard model is the interaction of the P. syringae effectors AvrB and AvrRpm1 with the Arabidopsis RIN4 protein. RIN4 interacts with these effectors in both yeast two-hybrid assays and coimmunoprecipitation assays (Mackey et al., 2002
The strongest data in support of the guard model comes from work on the P. syringae effector protein AvrPphB. Similar to the AvrPto story described above, recognition of AvrPphB by Arabidopsis requires both an NB-LRR protein, RPS5, and a protein kinase, PBS1 (Warren et al., 1999
Although the above data strongly support an indirect mechanism of pathogen recognition by NB-LRR proteins, there are now two reports of physical associations between plant NB-LRR proteins and pathogen proteins. The first involves the Pi-ta protein from rice (Oryza sativa) and the AVR-Pita protein from the fungus Magnaportha grisea (Jia et al., 2000
The second example is the RRS1 protein of Arabidopsis, which has been shown to interact with the PopP2 protein of Ralstonia solanacearum using a yeast split ubiquitin yeast two-hybrid assay (Deslandes et al., 2003
Clues to how NB-LRR proteins may activate defense responses have come from comparison to animal proteins. The NB domain of plant NB-LRR proteins shares significant similarity to several animal proteins known to regulate programmed cell death and immune responses (van der Biezen and Jones, 1998a; Inohara and Nunez, 2003
Because human NOD proteins appear to function in pathogen perception and are structurally similar to plant NB-LRR proteins, an understanding of how plant NB-LRR proteins are regulated may enhance our understanding of how NOD proteins are regulated, and vice versa. Work on the human NOD1 and Apaf-1 proteins has led to development of the induced proximity model for NOD protein activation (for review, see Inohara and Nunez, 2003
In support of this model, deletion of the C-terminal domains of either Apaf-1 or NOD1 promotes self-oligomerization and activation of downstream responses (Inohara and Nunez, 2003
It is not yet clear whether the NB-ARC domains of plant NB-LRR proteins also mediate self-oligomerization. The best insights to date come from work on the Rx protein of potato (Solanum tuberosum), which belongs to the CC-NB-LRR subclass (Moffett et al., 2002
Intramolecular interactions between the various domains of NB-LRR proteins are also indicated by work on the tomato Mi-1.1 protein. By creating domain swaps between Mi-1.1 and its close paralog Mi-1.2, Hwang and Williamson (2003)
The nucleotide binding domain of plant NB-LRR proteins is highly conserved and mutations in this domain invariably inactivate NB-LRR signaling (Tao et al., 2000
This hypothesis is supported by the work on the mammalian Apaf-1 protein described above. The binding of Apaf-1 to its ligand cytochrome C and subsequent oligomerization requires dATP or ATP, and substitution of the nonhydrolyzable analog ATP- Although it is not yet clear how ATP hydrolysis regulates ligand binding by Apaf-1 or other NB-ARC containing proteins, analogies to GTP binding proteins would suggest that hydrolysis causes a conformational change, and further, that nucleotide exchange between ADP and ATP may be an important aspect of regulating signaling. Figure 1 presents a model for how ATP hydrolysis and nucleotide exchange might be incorporated into the regulation of plant NB-LRR protein function. Although speculative, this model makes several testable predictions now that potential ligands for RPM1, RPS2, and RPS5 have been identified. In particular, it predicts that modification of the ligand (a host protein) by the pathogen virulence protein induces ATP hydrolysis by the NB-LRR protein, causing a conformational change in the NB-LRR protein that allows oligomerization. Inactivation of signaling would occur when ADP dissociates. The inactive NB-LRR protein would then have to bind another molecule of ATP before it would be able to function once again.
A recent flurry of papers has established that many NB-LRR proteins interact with cytosolic HSP90 proteins (Hubert et al., 2003
HSP90s may be assisted in the putative assembly of NB-LRR resistance protein complexes by two other conserved proteins, RAR1 and SGT1. RAR1 interacts with HSP90, and mutations in the Arabidopsis RAR1 gene cause a loss of detectable RPM1 protein (Tornero et al., 2002
Arabidopsis contains two SGT1 genes (Austin et al., 2002
Although much progress has been made in the last 2 years, there still remain large gaps in our understanding of the plant alarm system. Evidence is mounting that many, and perhaps most, pathogens are detected indirectly via the enzymatic activity of their virulence proteins. However, we still lack compelling evidence that a modified host protein directly activates NB-LRR signaling. An even more glaring gap in our current understanding is how plant NB-LRR proteins activate defense responses. Presumably these proteins physically associate with one or more downstream activator proteins, but we currently have very little information as to what these activators might be. Filling these gaps will undoubtedly keep many laboratories busy for some time to come. At this point we have a partial parts list for the alarm system and have some information on how each of the parts work, but have yet to sort out the wiring.
I thank Dr. Jeff Dangl, University of North Carolina, and Dr. Jeff Ellis, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia, for sharing papers in press, and the members of my laboratory for stimulating discussions and comments on this manuscript. Received February 3, 2004; returned for revision February 14, 2004; accepted February 16, 2004.
1 This work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (grant no. R01GM46451). www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.104.040410. * E-mail rinnes{at}indiana.edu; fax 8128556082.
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