Principles and characteristics of the WRKY regulatory network of early MAMP-triggered immunity [ChIP-Seq]

During microbe-associated molecular pattern (MAMP)-triggered immunity (MTI) more than 5000 Arabidopsis genes are significantly altered in their expression and the question arises, how such an enormous reprogramming of the transcriptome can be regulated in a safe and robust manner? For the WRKY transcription factors, which are important regulators not only of this defense response, it appears that they act in a complex regulatory sub-network rather than in a linear fashion, which is much more vulnerable to gene function loss either by pathogen-derived effectors or by mutations. In this study we employed RNA-seq, mass spectrometry and ChIP-seq to find evidence for and uncover principles and characteristics of this network. For each of two biological replicates we analysed 4 different conditions: plants of WT and wrky18 wrky40 wrky33 triple mutant genotype, each sampled at 0 h (untreated) and 2 h flg22 treatment. For each condition the IP was perfomred with an anti-allWrky antibody and input DNA served as negative control for the peak calling.