P-075 - Revolutionizing Plant Defense: Unveiling Key Signaling Mechanisms for Improved Resistance

Traditionally, effector-triggered immunity (ETI) has been studied alongside pattern-triggered immunity (PTI), leaving ETI-specific immune outputs underexplored. To address this, we integrated ATAC-seq and RNA-seq to generate chromatin accessibility landscapes during PTI, ETI, and PTI+ETI responses. Our results showed overlapping and distinct transcriptional regulatory components, offering novel insights into ETI-specific transcriptional reprogramming.

Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis identified highly upregulated transcription factors (TFs) involved in plant immunity, alongside previously uncharacterized components. To assess their significance, we introduced in silico perturbations into gene regulatory networks (GRNs) by selectively removing TF motif information. These perturbations altered network dynamics, suggesting key roles for specific TFs in ETI.

To validate these predictions, we constructed genome-wide TF-centric GRNs by integrating ATAC-seq and RNA-seq data from loss-of-function TF mutants. This revealed ETI-induced, TF-dependent immune circuits, allowing direct comparisons between computational predictions and experimental observations.
Building on these findings, we are now extending our approach to include time-series ATAC-seq and RNA-seq during ETI activation, as well as cell-type-specific GRN reconstruction. This will provide a high-resolution, dynamic view of plant immune regulation, uncovering critical temporal and spatial immune regulatory mechanisms.