Bacteria of the plant microbiota trigger a convergent non-self response in the host
Plants respond to various leaf-colonizing bacteria to different extents. In their recent publication in Nature Plants, the Vorholt Group describes a common response to non-self organisms that underlies individualized reactions.
Like most multicellular life, plants are colonized by microorganisms. These microscopic life forms can metabolize waste products or facilitate growth but they can also turn pathogenic. Therefore, it is crucial for the plant to discriminate among its colonizing microorganisms. To observe this differentiation, Maier et al. recorded transcriptional and metabolic changes in Arabidopsis thaliana after mono-colonization by 39 endogenous, bacterial strains. While the plants showed markedly different responses to the individual strains, the results showed that these responses nonetheless followed a hierarchical pattern. This hierarchy was led by the expression of 24 genes that were consistently upregulated in almost all bacterial treatments. Several members of these general non-self response genes were predictive of the overall magnitude of the host response and contributed to the plant's basal resistance to a bacterial pathogen.
Link to the paper in external page Nature Plants.