HRT-mediated Turnip crinkle virus resistance in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Turnip crinkle vims (TCV) inoculation onto resistant Arabidopsis ecotype Dijon（Di-17) leads to a hypersensitive response (HR) on the inoculated leaves. A dominant gene, HRT, which confers an HR to TCV, has been cloned from Di-17 plants by map-based cloning. HRT is a LZ-NBS-LRR class resistance gene and it belongs to a small gene family that includes RPP8, which confers resistance to Peronospora parasitica Emco5. Outside of the LRR region, HRT and RPP8 proteins share 98% amino acid identity while their LRR regions are less conserved (87% identity). HRT-transformed Arabidopsis plants developed an HR but generally remained susceptible to TCV due to a dominant RRT allele, which is not compatible with resistance. However, several transgenic plants that over-expressed HRT much higher than Di-l7 showed micro-HR or no HR when inoculated with TCV and were resistant to infection. Both the HR and resistance are dependent on salicylic acid but independent of NPRI, ethylene, or jasmonic acid. Arabidopsis plants containing both TCV coat protein gene and HRT developed massive necrosis and death in seedlings, indicating that the TCV coat protein is an avirulence factor detected by the HRT.