A Meta-Analysis Reveals Opposite Effects of Biotic and Abiotic Stresses on Transcript Levels of Arabidopsis Intracellular Immune Receptor Genes

Plant intracellular immune receptor NLR (nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat) proteins sense the presence of pathogens and trigger strong and robust immune responses. NLR genes are known to be tightly controlled at the protein level, but little is known about their dynamics at the transcript level. In this study, we presented a meta-analysis of transcript dynamics of all 207 NLR genes in the Col-0 accession of Arabidopsis thaliana under various biotic and abiotic stresses based on 88 publicly available RNA sequencing datasets from 27 independent studies. We find that about two thirds of the NLR genes are generally induced by pathogens, immune elicitors, or salicylic acid (SA), suggesting that transcriptional induction of NLR genes might be an important mechanism in plant immunity regulation. By contrast, NLR genes induced by biotic stresses are often repressed by abscisic acid, high temperature and drought, suggesting that transcriptional regulation of NLR genes might be important for interaction between abiotic and biotic stress responses. In addition, pathogen-induced expression of some NLR genes are dependent on SA induction. Interestingly, a small group of NLR genes are repressed under certain biotic stress treatments, suggesting an unconventional function of this group of NLRs. This meta-analysis thus reveals the transcript dynamics of NLR genes under biotic and abiotic stress conditions and suggests a contribution of NLR transcript regulation to plant immunity as well as interactions between abiotic and biotic stress responses.