{"id":52086,"date":"2025-01-08T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/?post_type=disclosure&p=52086"},"modified":"2025-01-08T09:07:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T17:07:38","slug":"plant-cells-gain-immune-capabilities-when-its-time-to-fight-disease","status":"publish","type":"disclosure","link":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/es\/news-release\/plant-cells-gain-immune-capabilities-when-its-time-to-fight-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant cells gain immune capabilities when it\u2019s time to fight disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA JOLLA\u2014Human bodies defend themselves using a diverse population of immune cells that circulate from one organ to another, responding to everything from cuts to colds to cancer. But plants don\u2019t have this luxury. Because plant cells are immobile, each individual cell is forced to manage its own immunity in addition to its many other responsibilities, like turning sunlight into energy or using that energy to grow. How these multitasking cells accomplish it all\u2014detecting threats, communicating those threats, and responding effectively\u2014has remained unclear.<\/p>\n

New research from Salk Institute scientists reveals how plant cells switch roles to protect themselves against pathogens. When a threat is encountered, the cells enter a specialized immune state and temporarily become PRimary IMmunE Responder (PRIMER) cells\u2014a new cell population that acts as a hub to initiate the immune response. The researchers also discovered that PRIMER cells are surrounded by another population of cells they call bystander cells, which seem to be important for transmitting the immune response throughout the plant.<\/p>\n

Los hallazgos, publicados en Naturaleza<\/em><\/a> on January 8, 2025, bring researchers closer to understanding the plant immune system\u2014an increasingly important task amid the growing threats of antimicrobial resistance and climate change, which both escalate the spread of infectious disease.<\/p>\n

\"Gene<\/a>
Gene expression visualized in a section of a pathogen-infected plant leaf.
Haga clic aqu\u00ed<\/a> para obtener una imagen en alta resoluci\u00f3n.
Cr\u00e9dito: Instituto Salk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIn nature, plants are constantly <\/em>being attacked and require a well-functioning immune system,\u201d says Professor Joseph Ecker<\/a>, senior author of the study, Salk International Council Chair in Genetics, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. \u201cBut plants don\u2019t have mobile, specialized immune cells like we do\u2014they must come up with an entirely different system where every cell can respond to immune attacks without sacrificing their other duties. Until now, we weren\u2019t quite sure how plants were accomplishing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plants encounter a wide range of pathogens, like bacteria that sneak in through leaf surface pores or fungi that directly invade plant \u201cskin\u201d cells. Since plant cells are stationary, when they encounter any of these pathogens, they become singularly responsible for responding and alerting nearby cells. Another interesting side effect of immobile cells is the fact that different pathogens may enter a plant at different locations and times, leading to varying immune response stages occurring simultaneously across the plant.<\/p>\n

With factors like timing, location, response state, and more all at play, an infected plant is a complicated organism to understand. To tackle this, the Salk team turned to two sophisticated cell profiling techniques called time-resolved single-cell multiomics and spatial transcriptomics. By pairing the two, the team was able to capture the plant immune response in each cell with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution.<\/p>\n

“Discovering these rare PRIMER cells and their surrounding bystander cells is a huge insight into how plant cells communicate to survive the many external threats they face day-to-day,\u201d says first author Tatsuya Nobori, a former postdoctoral researcher in Ecker\u2019s lab and current group leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>
From left: Joseph Ecker and Tatsuya Nobori.
Haga clic aqu\u00ed<\/a> for a high resolution image.
Cr\u00e9dito: Instituto Salk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The team introduced bacterial pathogens to the leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana\u2014<\/em>a flowering weed in the mustard family commonly used as a model in research. They then analyzed the plant\u2019s response to comprehensively identify each cell\u2019s state upon infection. In doing so, they discovered a novel immune response state, which they called PRIMER, that emerged in cells at specific immune hotspots. The PRIMER cells expressed a new transcription factor\u2014a type of protein that regulates gene expression\u2014called GT-3a, which is likely an important upstream alarm for alerting other cells to an active plant immune response.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the cells surrounding these PRIMER cells proved equally important. Dubbed \u201cbystander cells,\u201d the cells immediately neighboring PRIMER cells were expressing genes that enable long-distance cell-to-cell communication. The researchers plan to elucidate this relationship in future research, but for the time being, they suspect the interactions between PRIMER and bystander cells are key to propagating the immune response across the leaf.<\/p>\n

This new spatiotemporal, cell-specific insight into the plant immune response is already available as a reference database<\/a> for researchers worldwide. As pathogens continue to evolve and spread amid climate-related environmental changes and rising antibiotic resistance, the database offers an important springboard for preserving a future filled with healthy plants and crops.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of interest and demand for detailed cell atlases these days, so we\u2019re excited to create a new one that is publicly available for other researchers to use,\u201d says Ecker. \u201cOur atlas could lead to many new discoveries about how individual plant cells respond to environmental stressors, which will be crucial for creating more climate-resilient crops.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other authors include Joseph Nery of Salk; Alexander Monell of Salk and UC San Diego; Travis Lee of Salk and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Yuka Sakata, Shoma Shirahama, and Akira Mine of University of Kyoto in Japan.<\/p>\n

The work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Human Frontiers Science Program.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":52113,"template":"","faculty":[42],"disease-research":[450,451],"class_list":["post-52086","disclosure","type-disclosure","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","faculty-joseph-ecker","disease-research-climate-change","disease-research-plant-genomics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPlant cells gain immune capabilities when it\u2019s time to fight disease - Salk Institute for Biological Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/es\/news-release\/plant-cells-gain-immune-capabilities-when-its-time-to-fight-disease\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_MX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plant cells gain immune capabilities when it\u2019s time to fight disease - Salk Institute for Biological Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LA JOLLA\u2014Human bodies defend themselves using a diverse population of immune cells that circulate from one organ to another, responding to everything from cuts to colds to cancer. 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