Identification of novel susceptibility factors in Arabidopsis towards necreotrophic fungal pathogens.

Transcriptional profiles were carried out for four transcription factors and two receptor-like kinases mutants, corresponding to genes that are co-expressed in silico with the CESA7 gene in Arabidopsis. These mutants show enhanced disease susceptibility to the necrotrophic fungal pathogen Plecthosphaerella cucmerina. Several gene families of small secreted peptides, some of them with known hormone or signalling implications, were commonly up-regulated in all of the 6 genotypes, unveiling a functional implication of these secreted peptides in the defence pathway against fungi. Transcriptomics of 6 mutant plants, including four transcription factors and two receptor-like kinases, were compared to their background Col-0 accession. For this porpoise, plants were grown as described and leaves from three plants of each genotype were mixed and extracted as one single replicate. Three replicates from three different sets of plants were analysed for each genotype.