EMBO Fellows Meeting 2012

Ivan Acosta
EMBO Fellows Meeting 2012
A genetic approach to understand fast wound signaling in Arabidopsis plants
Abstract
In response to mechanical wounding, plants activate a very rapid de novo synthesis of the prohormone
jasmonic acid (JA) in tissues both proximal and distal to the injury site. JA is conjugated to hydrophobic amino
acids to produce regulatory ligands, which unleash a well-established set of transcriptional changes that in the
long term lead to defense and growth inhibition responses. Three fundamental questions regarding the fast
wound response remain largely unanswered: a) How is JA biosynthesis activated upon wounding? b) What is
the nature of the signal mediating long distance wound responses? c) How is this signal initiated, transmitted
to and decoded in distal tissues? We are approaching these questions with a forward genetic screen on
Arabidopsis seedlings carrying a transcriptional reporter (JAZ10pro:GUSPlus) that is early and robustly activated
upon wounding. Twenty-two promising mutants impaired in wound reporter activation either completely or in
specific tissues have been identified. Three of them are allelic to known indispensable components of JA
biosynthesis and signaling but the remaining 19 probably correspond to novel components of the wound
response. We have identified the genes affected in 10 of these novel mutants using next generation
sequencing and the other 9 are currently in the sequencing pipeline.
University of Lausanne
14-17 June 2012, Heidelberg, Germany