Studies of monocotyledonous plant were carried out using crops such as maize, wheat, barley, rice and so on but it took much time due to technical limitations. Brachypodium distachyon (purple false brome) can be an experimental model plant owing to its small stature, short lifecycle, self-fertility and small diploid genome. Since various pathogens threatening world crop cultivation has been shown to infect to Brachypodium, it may provide a useful model pathosystem for investigating both pathogen virulence and plant immunity. Plants use phytohormones salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA) and ethylene (ET) to induce defense responses against environmental stresses or pathogen infections. Therefore, we can monitor which types of responses are induced by using phytohormone-responsive marker genes as indicators. To establish research infrastructure, we looked for marker genes in Brachypodium based on the similarities to the known markers used in other plants and successfully identified 2 genes for SA, 7 for JA and 2 for ET. Furthermore, transcriptional responsiveness of 11 PR1 family genes in Brachypodium to each phytohormone revealed that constitution of this family genes and their phytohormone-inducibilities in Brachypodium are similar to those of rice. Our results using Brachypodium as a counterpart for rice, Arabidopsis and tobacco, as experimental models for dicototyledonous plants, suggest that monocots share a characteristic immune system.
Expression profiling of marker genes responsive to the defence-associated phytohormones salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene in Brachypodium distachyon
BMC Plant Biology (2016) 16:59
DOI: 10.1186/s12870-016-0749-9
Yusuke Kouzai, Mamiko Kimura, Yurie Yamanaka, Megumi Watanabe, Hidenori Matsui, Mikihiro Yamamoto,Yuki Ichinose, Kazuhiro Toyoda, Yoshihiko Onda, Keiichi Mochida and Yoshiteru Noutoshi
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Yoshiteru Noutoshi, Ph. D. (Associate Professor)
Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science, Okayama University
Email: noutoshi (a) okayama-u.ac.jp
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