Heritability of rhizobacteria-mediated induced systemic resistance and basal resistance in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Selected strains of non-pathogenic rhizobacteria have the ability to trigger an induced systemic resistance (ISR) response in plants. In Arabidopsis, rhizobacteria-mediated ISR has been extensively studied, using Pseudomonas fluorescens WCS417r as the inducing agent and P. syringae pv. tomato DC3000 (Pst) as the challenging pathogen. To investigate how far expression of ISR depends on the level of basal resistance, 10 different Arabidopsis ecotypes were screened for their potential to express WCS417r-mediated ISR and basal resistance against Pst. Two Arabidopsis ecotypes, RLD and Wassilewskija (Ws), were found to be blocked in their ability to express ISR. This ISR-noninducible phenotype correlated with a relatively low level of basal resistance against Pst. Genetic analysis of crosses between the ISR-inducible ecotypes Columbia (Col) and Landsberg erecta (Ler), on the one hand, and the non-inducible ecotypes RLD and Ws, on the other hand, revealed that ISR inducibility and basal resistance against Pst were inherited as monogenic dominant traits that are genetically linked. Neither ISR inducibility, nor basal resistance against Pst was complemented in the F1 progeny of a cross between RLD and Ws, indicating that both ecotypes are affected in the same locus. This locus, designated ISR1, was mapped between markers Ein3 and GL1 on chromosome III. Interestingly, ecotypes RLD and Ws also failed to express ISR against the oomycetous pathogen Peronospora parasitica, but they were not affected in their level of basal resistance against this pathogen. Thus, the ISR1 locus controls the expression of ISR against different pathogens but basal resistance only against Pst and not against P. parasitica. Like ecotypes RLD and Ws, ethylene-insensitive mutants showed the isr1 phenotype in that they were unable to express WCS417r-mediated ISR and show enhanced susceptibility to Pst infection. Analysis of ethylene responsiveness of RLD and Ws revealed that both ecotypes exhibit reduced sensitivity to ethylene. Therefore, it is proposed that the Arabidopsis ISR1 locus encodes a component of the ethylene-response pathway that plays an important role in ethylene-dependent resistance mechanisms.