Autophagy promotes jasmonate-mediated defense against nematodes.xlsx

Autophagy, as an intracellular degradation system, plays a critical role in plant immunity. However, the involvement of autophagy in the plant immune system and its function in plant nematode resistance are largely unknown. Here, we show that root-knot nematode (RKN; <em>Meloidogyne incognita</em>) infection induced autophagy in tomato (<em>Solanum lycopersicum</em>) and different <em>atg </em>mutants exhibited high sensitivity to RKNs. The jasmonate (JA) signaling negative regulators jasmonate-associated MYC2-like 1 (JAM1), JAM2 and JAM3 interacted with ATG8s via an ATG8-interacting motif (AIM), and JAM1 was degraded by autophagy during RKN infection. JAM1 impaired the formation of a transcriptional activation complex between ethylene response factor 1 (ERF1) and mediator 25 (MED25), and interfered with transcriptional regulation of JA mediated defense-related genes by ERF1. Furthermore, ERF1 acted in positive and regulated autophagy activity via transcriptionally activating <em>ATG</em> expression in response to RKN infection. Therefore, autophagy promotes JA mediated defense against RKNs via forming a positive feedback circuit in the degradation of JAMs and transcriptional activation by ERF1.