Plant response to chitin 4mer

Analysis of 14-day-old Columbia-0 seedlings treated with chito-tetramer.Results provide insight into the signaling pathways involved in plant devlopment in response to the four-mer. Chitin is the second biopolymer most abundant at nature, after cellulose, forming part of insect exosqueletons, crustacean shells, krill and fungal spores where is present as a high molecular weight molecule. Previously we showed that Arabidopsis defense related clusters of genes were induced by high molecular weight chitin (CHH) or 8mer oligosaccharides similarly (Ramonell et al., 2005), some of those genes were essential for effective defense against phytopathogenic fungus (Berrocal-Lobo et al., 2010). At this work we show that differentially, a chitin oligosaccharide of lower molecular weight (4mer), induce genes in Arabidopsis related principally to vegetative growth, development and carbon and nitrogen metabolism. 3 samples treated by the 4mer and 3 control samples