Comparative transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana infested by diamond back moth (Plutella xylostella) larvae reveals signatures of stress response, secondary metabolism, and signalling
Date
2008-04-09
Authors
Ehlting, Jürgen
Chowrira, Sunita G
Mattheus, Nathalie
Aeschliman, Dana S
Arimura, Gen-Ichiro
Bohlmann, Jörg
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
Background: Plants are exposed to attack from a large variety of herbivores. Feeding insects can induce
substantial changes of the host plant transcriptome. Arabidopsis thaliana has been established as a relevant system
for the discovery of genes associated with response to herbivory, including genes for specialized (i.e. secondary)
metabolism as well as genes involved in plant-insect defence signalling.
Results: Using a 70-mer oligonulceotide microarray covering 26,090 gene-specific elements, we monitored
changes of the Arabidopsis leaf transcriptome in response to feeding by diamond back moth (DBM; Plutella
xylostella) larvae. Analysis of samples from a time course of one hour to 24 hours following onset of DBM feeding
revealed almost three thousand (2,881) array elements (including 2,671 genes with AGI annotations) that were
differentially expressed (>2-fold; p[t-test] < 0.05) of which 1,686 also changed more than twofold in expression
between at least two time points of the time course with p(ANOVA) < 0.05. While the majority of these
transcripts were up-regulated within 8 h upon onset of insect feeding relative to untreated controls, cluster
analysis identified several distinct temporal patterns of transcriptome changes. Many of the DBM-induced genes
fall into ontology groups annotated as stress response, secondary metabolism and signalling. Among DBM-induced
genes associated with plant signal molecules or phytohormones, genes associated with octadecanoid signalling
were clearly overrepresented. We identified a substantial number of differentially expressed genes associated
with signal transduction in response to DBM feeding, and we compared there expression profiles with those of
previously reported transcriptome responses induced by other insect herbivores, specifically Pieris rapae,
Frankliniella occidentalis, Bemisia tabaci,Myzus persicae, and Brevicoryne brassicae.
Conclusion: Arabidopsis responds to feeding DBM larvae with a drastic reprogramming of the transcriptome,
which has considerable overlap with the response induced by other insect herbivores. Based on a meta-analysis
of microarray data we identified groups of transcription factors that are either affected by multiple forms of biotic
or abiotic stress including DBM feeding or, alternatively, were responsive to DBM herbivory but not to most
other forms of stress.
Description
BioMed Central
Keywords
Centre for Forest Biology
Citation
Ehlting et al.: Comparative transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana infested by diamond back moth (Plutella xylostella) larvae reveals signatures of stress response, secondary metabolism, and signalling. BMC Genomics 2008, 9 :154