RESUMEN

Plant-microbe-arthropod (PMA) three-way interactions have important implications for plant health. However, our poor understanding of the underlying regulatory mechanisms hampers their biotechnological applications. To this end, we searched for potential common patterns in plant responses regarding taxonomic groups or lifestyles. We found that most signaling modules regulating two-way interactions also operate in three-way interactions. Furthermore, the relative contribution of signaling modules to the final plant response cannot be directly inferred from two-way interactions. Moreover, our analyses show that three-way interactions often result in the activation of additional pathways, as well as in changes in the speed or intensity of defense activation. Thus, detailed, basic knowledge of plant-microbe-arthropod regulation will be essential for the design of environmentally friendly crop management strategies.

Asunto(s)

Artrópodos , Animales , Plantas , Transducción de Señal

RESUMEN

Plants produce an array of diverse secondary metabolites with important ecological functions, providing protection against pests, diseases, and abiotic stresses. Secondary metabolites are also a rich source of bioactive compounds for drug and agrochemical development. Despite the importance of these compounds, the metabolic diversity of plants remains largely unexploited, primarily due to the problems associated with mining large and complex genomes. It has recently emerged that genes for the synthesis of multiple major classes of plant-derived secondary metabolites (benzoxinones, diterpenes, triterpenes, and cyanogenic glycosides) are organized in clusters reminiscent of the metabolic gene clusters found in microbes. Many more secondary metabolic clusters are likely to emerge as the body of sequence information available for plants continues to grow, accelerated by high-throughput sequencing. Here, we describe approaches for the identification of secondary metabolic gene clusters in plants through forward and reverse genetics, map-based cloning, and genome mining and give examples of methods used for the analysis and functional confirmation of new clusters.

Asunto(s)

Genes de Plantas , Metaboloma/genética , Familia de Multigenes , Saponinas/análisis , Terpenos/metabolismo , Avena/genética , Clonación Molecular/métodos , Biología Computacional , Técnicas de Inactivación de Genes , Ligamiento Genético , Sitios Genéticos , Vectores Genéticos/genética , Vectores Genéticos/metabolismo , Transferasas Intramoleculares/genética , Transferasas Intramoleculares/metabolismo , Metabolómica/métodos , Mutación , Fenotipo , Proteínas de Plantas/genética , Proteínas de Plantas/metabolismo , Genética Inversa/métodos , Saponinas/genética , Saponinas/metabolismo , Terpenos/análisis , Levaduras/genética , Levaduras/metabolismo