CHARACTERISTICS OF HERBIVORY/WOUND-ELICITED ELECTRICAL SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION IN TOMATO

Highlights

• Herbivory and mechanical wounding elicited electrical signals.

• Petiole wounding elicited stronger electrical signals than did leaflet wounding.

• Leaflet wounding elicited electrical signals and JA signaling within a compound leaf.

• GLR3.3 and GLR3.5 mediated leaflet-to-leaflet electrical signal transduction.

• JA synthesis and Helicoverpa armigera resistance were reduced in glr3.3/3.5 plants.

Abstract

Electrical signals commonly occur in plants in response to various environmental changes and have a dominant function in plant acclimation. The transduction of wound-elicited electrical signals in the model plant species Arabidopsis has been characterized but the characteristics of electrical signal transduction in response to herbivory or wounding in crop species remain unknown. Here, the features of electrical signals elicited by insect herbivory and wounding in tomato were investigated. Unlike those in Arabidopsis, wounding tomato leaves did not cause leaf-to-leaf electrical signal transduction. In contrast, electrical signals elicited in response to petiole wounding were stronger and more strongly transduced. Leaflet wounding also activated electrical signal transduction and jasmonic acid (JA) signaling within the whole compound leaf. It was also demonstrated that tomato glutamate receptor-like 3.3 (GLR3.3) and GLR3.5 mediated leaflet-to-leaflet electrical signal transduction. Herbivory-induced JA accumulation and Helicoverpa armigera resistance were reduced in glr3.3/3.5 plants. This work reveals the nature of electrical signal transduction in tomato and emphasizes the key roles of GLR3.3 and GLR3.5 in electrical signal transduction and JA signaling activation.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

electrical signal / glutamate receptor-like / herbivory / jasmonic acid / tomato

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2021395 contains supplementary materials (Table S1; Figs. S1–S4).

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Projects of International Cooperation and Exchange (32020103013) and the Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System of China (CARS-25-02A).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Chaoyi Hu, Siqi Duan, Jie Zhou, and Jingquan Yu declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2021. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)