Diverse pathogen effectors convergently target conserved components in plant immunity guarded by intracellular nucleotide‐binding domain leucine‐rich repeat receptors (NLRs) and activate effector‐triggered immunity (ETI), often causing cell death. Little is known of the differences underlying ETI in different plants triggered by the same effector. In this study, we demonstrated that effector RipAW triggers ETI on Nicotiana benthamiana and Nicotiana tabacum. Both the first 107 amino acids (N1‐107) and RipAW E3‐ligase activity are required but not sufficient for triggering ETI on N. benthamiana. However, on N. tabacum, the N1‐107 fragment is essential and sufficient for inducing cell death. The first 60 amino acids of the protein are not essential for RipAW‐triggered cell death on either N. benthamiana or N. tabacum. Furthermore, simultaneous mutation of both R75 and R78 disrupts RipAW‐triggered ETI on N. tabacum, but not on N. benthamiana. In addition, N. tabacum recognizes more RipAW orthologs than N. benthamiana. These data showcase the commonalities and specificities of RipAW‐activated ETI in two evolutionally related species, suggesting Nicotiana species have acquired different abilities to perceive RipAW and activate plant defences during plant–pathogen co‐evolution.

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important mechanism by which eukaryotes regulate transcription and protein diversity. The dynamic changes in AS that occur on a genome-wide scale during interactions between plant roots and pathogens remain unknown. Here, we used the interaction between Arabidopsis and Ralstonia solanacearum as a model to explore the AS changes that take place during the response of roots to infection by means of high-throughput RNA-sequencing. We showed that dynamic changes in AS occur much earlier than changes at the level of transcription during R.solanacearum infection. Comparing genes that are regulated at the transcriptional and AS levels indicated that there are few common genes between differentially spliced genes (DSGs) and differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The functional gene ontology (GO) analysis identified that the enriched GO terms for the DSGs were different from those of the DEGs. The DSGs were over-represented in GO terms associated with post-transcriptional and translational regulations, suggesting that AS may act on RNA stability and during post-translation, thus affecting the output of plant defense molecules. Meanwhile, changes in DSGs were infection stage-specific. Furthermore, the nucleotide binding domain and leucine-rich repeat proteins and receptor-like kinases, key regulators in plant immunity, were shown to undergo dynamic changes in AS in response to R. solanacearum. Taken together, AS, along with transcription, modulates plant root defense to R. solanacearum through transcriptome reprogramming.