TY - JOUR T1 - Transgenic expression of the dicotyledonous pattern recognition receptor EFR in rice leads to ligand dependent activation of defense responses JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/006155 SP - 006155 AU - Benjamin Schwessinger AU - Ofir Bahar AU - Thomas Nicolas AU - Vladimir Nekrasov AU - Deling Ruan AU - Patrick E. Canlas AU - Arsalan Daudi AU - Christopher J. Petzold AU - Vasanth R Singan AU - Rita Kuo AU - Mansi Chovatia AU - Chris Daum AU - Joshua L. Heazlewood AU - Cyril Zipfel AU - Pamela C. Ronald Y1 - 2014/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/06/11/006155.abstract N2 - Plant plasma membrane localized pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) detect extracellular pathogen associated molecules. PRRs such as Arabidopsis EFR and rice XA21 are taxonomically restricted and are absent from most plant genomes. Here we show that rice plants expressing the PRR EFR or the chimeric receptor EFR::XA21, containing the EFR ectodomain and the XA21 intracellular domain, sense both Escherichia coli- and Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo)-derived elf18 peptides. Treatment of rice-EFR and rice-EFR::XA21 leaf tissue with elf18 leads to MAP kinase activation and defense gene expression. Although expression of EFR does not lead to robust enhanced resistance to fully virulent Xoo isolates, it does lead to slightly enhanced resistance to weakly virulent Xoo isolates.EFR interacts with OsSERK2 and the XA21 binding protein 24 (XB24), two key components of the rice XA21-mediated immune response. Rice-EFR plants silenced for OsSERK2, or overexpressing rice XB24 are compromised in elf18-induced defense gene expression indicating that these proteins are also important for EFR-mediated signaling in transgenic rice.Taken together, our results demonstrate the feasibility of enhancing disease resistance in rice and possibly other monocotyledonous crop species by expression of dicotyledonous PRRs. Our results also suggest that Arabidopsis EFR utilizes at least a subset of the known endogenous rice XA21 signaling components. ER -