Investigating the role of histone acetylation in effector triggered immunity

"Plants rely on innate immunity to combat pathogens. Plant immune responses involve R proteins, which can detect pathogen-derived effectors and initiate effector-triggered immunity (ETI). R proteins consist of a conserved central nucleotide-binding (NB) domain and a C-terminal leucine-rich repeats (LRR) domain, but have variable N-terminal domains (NLRs). Activation of NLRs leads to MAPKs signalling cascades and NLR oligomerisation to high molecular weight complexes, that are required for preventing the progress of infection through programmed cell death (PCD). Helper NLR proteins (hNLRs) also play a crucial role in PCD, signal transduction and ETI transcriptional responses.

GCN5, a histone acetyltransferase, regulates the expression of a broad range of genes by H3K9 and H3K14 acetylation in response to different environmental stresses. This project will investigate the involvement of the GCN5-mediated histone acetylation in the transcriptional regulation downstream of the ADR1 and NRG1 subfamilies of hNLRs and of MAP kinases during ETI. By identifying the genes that are acetylated during infection, at the different stages of immunity and using genetic approaches involving inducible acetylation and mutants for GCN5 and helper genes, this project aims to understand the transcriptional regulation of helpers, and to shed light upon the epigenetic mechanisms that regulate plant defence responses."