Time series expression profiling of lettuce during Botrytis cinerea infection

Resistance against Botrytis cinerea is quantitative, governed by multiple small-medium impact loci, with plant responses involving large-scale transcriptional reprogramming. We aim to identify transcriptional regulators of the lettuce defence response against this fungal pathogen to use as targets for the development of cultivars with reduced susceptibility. We generated high-resolution time series expression data from lettuce leaves following mock or B. cinerea inoculation, capturing the dynamics of the transcriptional response. We used this data to infer a gene regulatory network (GRN) underlying the lettuce defence response. This GRN was used to predict key regulators of lettuce immunity, identifying positive and negative regulators of defence against B. cinerea, as well as downstream target genes. These data provide a high level of detail on defence-induced transcriptional change in a crop species and a GRN with the ability to accurately predict transcription factors mediating disease resistance in lettuce and other species.