Epigenetic variation in Arabidopsis disease resistance
Abstract
Plant pathogen resistance is mediated by a large repertoire of resistance (R) genes, which are often clustered in the genome and show a high degree of genetic variation. Here, we show that anArabidopsis thaliana R-gene cluster is also subject to epigenetic variation. We describe a heritable but metastable epigenetic variant bal that overexpresses the R-like geneAt4g16890 from a gene cluster on Chromosome 4. The balvariant and Arabidopsis transgenics overexpressing theAt4g16890 gene are dwarfed and constitutively activate the salicylic acid (SA)-dependent defense response pathway. Overexpression of a related R-like gene also occurs in the ssi1( s uppressor of S A i nsensitivity 1 ) background, suggesting that ssi1 is mechanistically related to bal.
Keywords
Footnotes
-
↵1 Corresponding author.
-
E-MAIL richards{at}biology.wustl.edu; FAX (314) 935-4432.
-
Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.952102.
-
- Received October 5, 2001.
- Accepted November 26, 2001.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
