Field conditions greatly modify a major growth-defense tradeoff inArabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

AbstractWhen plants defend themselves from pathogens, this often comes with a trade-off: the same genes that protect a plant from disease can also reduce its growth and fecundity in the absence of pathogens. One protein implicated in a major growth-defense trade-off in the plantArabidopsis thalianais ACCELERATED CELL DEATH 6 (ACD6), an ion channel that modulates salicylic acid (SA) synthesis to potentiate a wide range of defenses. Wild plant populations maintain significant functional variation in theACD6gene, with some alleles making the protein hyperactive. In the greenhouse, plants with hyperactiveACD6alleles are resistant to diverse pathogens, yet are of smaller stature, their leaves senesce earlier, and they set fewer seeds. We hypothesized that such hyperactive alleles would not only affect the growth of microbial pathogens, but also more generally leaf microbiome assembly in the wild. To test this, we grew plants with hyperactive, standard, and defectiveACD6alleles in the same field-collected soil, both in climate-controlled conditions and outdoors. We surveyed visual phenotypes, gene expression, hormone levels, seed production, and the microbiome in each environment. To our surprise, we discovered that mature field plants, in stark contrast to greenhouse plants, were unaffected by theirACD6genotype, suggesting that additional abiotic and/or microbial signals present outdoors – but not in the greenhouse – greatly modulateACD6activity.