Alternative splicing as a key player in the fine‐tuning of the immunity response in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Plants are constantly exposed to various types of environmental stresses, which negatively affect the productivity of agricultural crops. Complex multicellular organisms must efficiently and rapidly respond to a wide variety of environmental stimuli, both abiotic (e.g., drought or salinity) and biotic (e.g., bacterial infections). These pathways require unique and highly coordinated molecular responses that are achieved through the differential regulation of the genome to generate specific transcriptomes and proteomes for each environmental condition and cell type (Martín et al., 2021).Stress factors cause numerous perturbations in plant metabolism, and consequently can lead to abnormal development and even death. Plants, as organisms leading a stationary lifestyle, cannot avoid the source of stress, therefore they have developed specific defence mechanisms that lead to reprogramming of cellular metabolism and activation of immune system reactions, which effectively allow them to overcome adverse environmental conditions and

Alternative Splicing, An Overlooked Defense Frontier of Plants with Respect to Bacterial Infection

“…The knockdown of SmD1 and SmD3-b results in more potent activation of crucial pathogenic markers as well as altered expression of extensive defense genes. As an additional point of interest, SmD3-b is required for the AS patterns of MPK4 , CPK28 , cysteine-rich receptor-like kinase 4 ( CRK4 ), and BAK1 , as well as the R genes SNC1 and SNC4 , which are associated with pathogen response . Finally, Zhang et al analyzed SlSKIP1a and SlSKIP1b in tomato, and the expression of SlSKIP1b was activated via Pst DC3000 and defense-associated signals …”

“…As an additional point of interest, SmD3-b is required for the AS patterns of MPK4, CPK28, cysteine-rich receptor-like kinase 4 (CRK4), and BAK1, as well as the R genes SNC1 and SNC4, which are associated with pathogen response. 62 Finally, Zhang et al analyzed SlSKIP1a and SlSKIP1b in tomato, and the expression of SlSKIP1b was activated via Pst DC3000 and defense-associated signals. 63 Splicing factors and other regulatory factors are both involved in regulating the AS of the R genes.…”

“…A recent study on AS in plant responses to biotic stress found that cotranslational and posttranscriptional splicing are unique mechanisms for dynamically regulating the expression of defense-related factors, thereby fine-tuning the plant immune response. 62 To gain a deeper comprehension of plant gene-to-gene resistance in future research, it is necessary to investigate the functional mechanism, subcellular location, and interaction of R proteins with the target protein avirulence protein Avr. Abbreviations: NF1, neurofibromatosis type I; IL-4, interleukin 4; RPS4, resistance to syringae 4; CPK28, calcium-dependent protein kinase 28; BIK1, botrytis-induced kinase 1 (The figure was created on BioRender.…”

A splicing variant of EDS1 from Vitis vinifera forms homodimers but no heterodimers with PAD4

“…To elucidate the structural background of these features, we started efforts to solve the crystal structure of VvEDS1. In this context, we discovered a complementary DNA (cDNA) resulting potentially from intron retention, the most frequent form of alternative splicing of pre‐mRNA in plants (Kufel et al, 2022), and coding for a VvEDS1 variant significantly smaller than the wildtype protein. This shortened VvEDS1 variant is the main subject of the study presented here.…”

Eukaryotic splicing machinery in the plant–virus battleground

“…Alternative splicing (AS) is a process that alters pre‐mRNA by splicing introns (noncoding sequences), resulting in different exon (coding sequences) combinations from spliced RNA transcripts to generate mature and diverse mRNA isoforms. The resultant mRNA transcript can translate into different amino acids and, consequently, lead to proteins of varying composition and distinct functions (Kufel et al, 2022), resulting in increased proteome diversity (Chen et al, 2021). Splicing factors do not usually positively affect the productive splicing of their pre‐mRNAs, and interactions between different splicing factors can produce positive feedback and bistability (Alon, 2007).…”