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Arabidopsis Leaf Trichomes as Acoustic Antennae.

ABSTRACT: The much studied plant Arabidopsis thaliana has been reported recently to react to the sounds of caterpillars of Pieris rapae chewing on its leaves by promoting synthesis of toxins that can deter herbivory. Identifying participating receptor cells-potential "ears"-of Arabidopsis is critical to understanding and harnessing this response. Motivated in part by other recent observations that Arabidopsis trichomes (hair cells) respond to mechanical stimuli such as pressing or brushing by initiating potential signaling factors in themselves and in the neighboring skirt of cells, we analyzed the vibrational responses of Arabidopsis trichomes to test the hypothesis that trichomes can respond acoustically to vibrations associated with feeding caterpillars. We found that these trichomes have vibrational modes in the frequency range of the sounds of feeding caterpillars, encouraging further experimentation to determine whether trichomes serve as mechanical antennae.

SUBMITTER: Liu S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5685652 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Arabidopsis Leaf Trichomes as Acoustic Antennae.

Liu Shaobao S Jiao Jiaojiao J Lu Tian Jian TJ Xu Feng F Pickard Barbara G BG Genin Guy M GM

Biophysical journal 20171101 9

The much studied plant Arabidopsis thaliana has been reported recently to react to the sounds of caterpillars of Pieris rapae chewing on its leaves by promoting synthesis of toxins that can deter herbivory. Identifying participating receptor cells-potential "ears"-of Arabidopsis is critical to understanding and harnessing this response. Motivated in part by other recent observations that Arabidopsis trichomes (hair cells) respond to mechanical stimuli such as pressing or brushing by initiating p ...[more]

PMID: 29117529

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Project description:BackgroundRosette leaf trichomes of Arabidopsis thaliana have been broadly used to study cell development, cell differentiation and, more recently, cell wall biogenesis. However, trichome-specific biochemical or -omics analyses require a proper separation of trichomes from residual plant tissue. Thus, different strategies were proposed in the past for trichome isolation, which mostly rely on harsh conditions and suffer from low yield, thereby limiting the spectrum of downstream analyses.ResultsTo take trichome-leaf separation to the next level, we revised a previously proposed method for isolating A. thaliana trichomes by optimizing the mechanical and biochemical specifications for trichome release. We additionally introduced a density gradient centrifugation step to remove residual plant debris. We found that prolonged, yet mild seedling agitation increases the overall trichome yield by more than 60% compared to the original protocol. We noticed that subsequent density gradient centrifugation further visually enhances trichome purity, which may be advantageous for downstream analyses. Gene expression analysis by quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction validated a substantial enrichment upon purification of trichomes by density gradient centrifugation. Histochemical and biochemical investigation of trichome cell wall composition indicated that unlike the original protocol gentle agitation during trichome release largely preserves trichome integrity. We used enriched and density gradient-purified trichomes for proteomic analysis in comparison to trichome-depleted leaf samples and present a comprehensive reference data set of trichome-resident and -enriched proteins. Collectively we identified 223 proteins that are highly enriched in trichomes as compared to trichome-depleted leaves. We further demonstrate that the procedure can be applied to retrieve diverse glandular and non-glandular trichome types from other plant species.ConclusionsWe provide an advanced method for the isolation of A. thaliana leaf trichomes that outcompetes previous procedures regarding yield and purity. Due to the large amount of high-quality trichomes our method enabled profound insights into the so far largely unexplored A. thaliana trichome proteome. We anticipate that our protocol will be of use for a variety of downstream analyses, which are expected to shed further light on the biology of leaf trichomes in A. thaliana and possibly other plant species.

Dataset Information

Arabidopsis Leaf Trichomes as Acoustic Antennae.

Publications

Arabidopsis Leaf Trichomes as Acoustic Antennae.

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