Evidences for involvement of endogenous cAMP in Arabidopsis defense responses to Verticillium toxins

Although there were reports suggesting the involvement of endogenous cAMP in plant defense signaling cascades, there is no direct evidence supporting this notion yet and the detailed mechanism is unclear. In the present study, we have used pathogenic fungi Verticillium dahliae and Arabidopsis Plants as a model system of plant-microb interaction to demonstrate the function of endogenous cAMP in Arabidopsis defense responses. Both V. dahliae inoculation and Verticillium toxins injection induced typical "wilt" symptoms in Arabidopsis seedlings. When either 8-Br-AMP (a membrane permeable cAMP analogue) or salicylic acid (SA) was applied to Arabidopsis, the Plants became resistant to V. dahliae toxins. However, addition of 8-Br-AMP did not increase the resistance of Arabidopsis transgenic Plants deficient in SA to the toxins, suggesting that cAMP might act upstream of SA in plant defense signaling pathway. Indeed, 8-Br-cAMP and forskolin, an activator of adenylyl cyclase, significantly stimulated the endogenous SA level in Plants, whereas DDA, an inhibitor of adenylyl cyclase dramatically reduced toxin-induced SA increase. Both the endogenous cAMP and SA increased significantly in Arabidopsis seedlings treated with toxins. Furthermore, transcription level of pathogenesis-related protein 1 gene (PR1) was strongly induced by both 8-Br-cAMP and the toxin treatment. Taken together, our data demonstrate that endogenous cAMP is involved in plant defense responses against Verticillium-secreted toxins by regulating the production of the known signal SA in plant defense pathway.