Tradeoff levels between pathogen responses and plant growth in Arabidopsis ecotypes

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K22430
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 44:Biology at cellular to organismal levels, and related fields
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Kakimoto Tatsuo 大阪大学, 理学研究科, 教授 (70214260)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-06-28 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: defense / pathogen / growth / Arabidopsis / ecotype / FLS2

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We treated Arabidopsis accessions of with a flagellin fragment, flg22 and examined growth repression. The growth repression levels by flagellin were highly diverse. Many accessions around the Great Lakes of USA showed no or only weak responses to flg22. A genome-wide association study revealed that the trait was associated with the chromosomal region near FLS2, coding for the flagellin receptor. This study revealed that partial or complete loss of FLS2 may contribute to the fitness in specific environments.

Free Research Field

Plant Science

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

種内にはvariation(変異)が存在し、それぞれの形質の環境への適応度に応じ、それぞれの地域での各変異の頻度が違っている。一般的には特有の複数の形質の組み合わせの適応度の違いが結果として隔離を引き起こし、エコタイプ （生態型）が生まれる。本研究で見られた変異が、いわゆるエコタイプ形成に至っているのかどうかは今後の課題であるが、本研究は基本免疫応答の種内の多様性を明らかにしたもので、進化の研究に新たな視点をもたらす可能性がある。