RNA-Seq of Arabidopsis thaliana and Arabidopsis lyrata plants primed by insect eggs from Pieris brassicae and triggered by insect herbivory

In Arabidopsis thaliana it is known that plants that harboured eggs of the White cabbage butterfly (Pieris brassicae) before larval feeding can defend better against the herbivore stress. As Arabidopsis thaliana is an annual plant we were interested in the plant defense and possible priming reaction of the closest biannual/perennial relative Arabidopsis lyrata. The main aim of the experiment was to compare the effect induced by insect egg deposition of Pieris brassicae between A. thaliana and A. lyrata plants grown in parallel on the transcriptional level. We used a full factorial setup consisting of a) untreated control plants , b) plants which experienced eggs for 6 days without larval feeding after that period, c) plants which experienced no eggs before larval feeding for 24 hours d) plants which experienced eggs for 6 days and larval herbivory for 24 hours. This setup was conducted with 7 week old vegetative plants For all treatments leaf tissue from the leaves that experienced egg oviposition and/or larval feeding were collected.