Professor Universite de Lausanne Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland
The effector-triggered immunity (ETI) response is a crucial defense mechanism that helps plants resist pathogen infections and limit their spread. While extensive research has been conducted on the biochemical aspects of ETI in leaves, its variability across different plant cell types remains largely unexplored. To investigate the ETI landscape in a developing plant, we developed Arabidopsis transgenic lines capable of expressing avirulence genes in a cell-type-specific and inducible manner. Our results reveal that ETI responses are activated in 12 distinct cell types, displaying significant heterogeneity. Notably, ETI-induced cell death is more pronounced in shoots than in roots, providing new insights into the spatial variability of immune responses in plants. This study not only uncovers the divergence of cell-type-specific responses during ETI but also offers new data on the previously underexplored root ETI response.
