Plant N-acylethanolamines play a crucial role in defense and its variation in response to elevated CO2 and temperature in tomato

Abstract

The ubiquitous lipid-derived molecules N-acylethanolamines (NAEs) have multiple immune functions in mammals, but their roles and mechanisms in plant defense response during changing environment remain largely unclear. Here, we found that exogenous NAE18:0 and NAE18:2 promoted defense against the necrotrophic pathogen Botrytis cinerea but suppressed defense to the hemi-biotrophic pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst) DC3000 in tomato. The knocking-down and overexpression function analysis of the pathogen-responsive NAE synthetic gene PHOSPHOLIPASE Dγ (PLDγ) and hydrolytic gene FATTY ACID AMID HYDROLASE 1 (FAAH1) revealed that the NAE pathway is crucial for plant defense response. Using exogenous applications and SA-abolished NahG plants, we unveiled the antagonistic relationship between NAE and SA in plant defense response. Elevated CO₂ and temperature significantly changed the NAE pathway in response to pathogens, while inhibition of the NAE pathway led to the alternation of environment-mediated defense variations against Pst DC3000 in tomato, indicating that NAE pathway is associated with plant defense variations in response to elevated CO₂ and temperature. The results herein reveal a new function of NAE in plant defense, and its involvement in environment-mediated defense variation in tomato. These findings shed light on the NAE-based plant defense, which may have relevance to crop disease management in future changing climate.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (2021C02040), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32172650, 31902097), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LR19C150001), and the Starry Night Science Fund of Zhejiang University Shanghai Institute for Advanced Study (SN-ZJU-SIAS-0011).

Author contributions

K.S. conceived and designed the research; Z.H., J.S., S.F., and S.S. performed the experiments; X.W. provided technical/intellectual support; Z.H. and K.S. wrote the article with contributions from other authors.

Data availability

All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and within its supplementary data published online.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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