Study of expression changes during RPS4-mediated resistance in Arabidopsis using a temperature-inducible system which mirrors NLR activation II

Innate immune responses of plant cells confer the first line of defence against pathogens. Signals generated by activated receptors are integrated inside the cell and converge on transcriptional programmes in the nucleus. The Arabidopsis Toll-related intracellular receptor RPS4 operates inside nuclei to trigger resistance and defence gene reprogramming through the stress response regulator, EDS1. Using RNA-seq, we analyzed the early RPS4-mediated transcriptional changes over time in a temperature-conditioned and pathogen-independent system. Overall design: We used transgenic Arabidopsis plants over-expressing RPS4, a genetic background in which an immune response can be turned on rapidly and synchronously in leaf cells after a switch from high to moderate temperature. In order to substract defense-unrelated artifacts due to the temperature stimulus, we used Col-0 WT plants in parallel as negative control. Three replicates were obtained per condition.