PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Wang, Guan-Feng
AU  - He, Yijian
AU  - Strauch, Renee
AU  - Olukolu, Bode A.
AU  - Nielsen, Dahlia
AU  - Li, Xu
AU  - Balint-Kurti, Peter J.
TI  - Maize Homologs of Hydroxycinnamoyltransferase, a Key Enzyme in Lignin Biosynthesis, Bind the Nucleotide Binding Leucine-Rich Repeat Rp1 Proteins to Modulate the Defense Response
AID  - 10.1104/pp.15.00703
DP  - 2015 Nov 01
TA  - Plant Physiology
PG  - 2230--2243
VI  - 169
IP  - 3
4099  - http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/169/3/2230.short
4100  - http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/169/3/2230.full
SO  - Plant Physiol.2015 Nov 01; 169
AB  - In plants, most disease resistance genes encode nucleotide binding Leu-rich repeat (NLR) proteins that trigger a rapid localized cell death called a hypersensitive response (HR) upon pathogen recognition. The maize (Zea mays) NLR protein Rp1-D21 derives from an intragenic recombination between two NLRs, Rp1-D and Rp1-dp2, and confers an autoactive HR in the absence of pathogen infection. From a previous quantitative trait loci and genome-wide association study, we identified a single-nucleotide polymorphism locus highly associated with variation in the severity of Rp1-D21-induced HR. Two maize genes encoding hydroxycinnamoyltransferase (HCT; a key enzyme involved in lignin biosynthesis) homologs, termed HCT1806 and HCT4918, were adjacent to this single-nucleotide polymorphism. Here, we show that both HCT1806 and HCT4918 physically interact with and suppress the HR conferred by Rp1-D21 but not other autoactive NLRs when transiently coexpressed in Nicotiana benthamiana. Other maize HCT homologs are unable to confer the same level of suppression on Rp1-D21-induced HR. The metabolic activity of HCT1806 and HCT4918 is unlikely to be necessary for their role in suppressing HR. We show that the lignin pathway is activated by Rp1-D21 at both the transcriptional and metabolic levels. We derive a model to explain the roles of HCT1806 and HCT4918 in Rp1-mediated disease resistance.GlossaryBiFCbimolecular fluorescence complementationcDNAcomplementary DNACo-IPcoimmunoprecipitationHRhypersensitive responseLDlinkage disequilibriumMAMPmicrobe-associated molecular patternNAMnested association mappingRNA-SeqRNA-sequencingSAsalicylic acidSNPsingle-nucleotide polymorphism