Reporter-based screen for <Emphasis Type="Italic">Arabidopsis</Emphasis> mutants compromised in nonhost resistance

Plants are exposed to many potentially pathogenic microbes in the environment, but each species is only susceptible to a limited number of pathogens. The broad resistance is referred to as nonhost resistance. To date, little is known about the underlying mechanism of nonhost resistance and the signaling transduction process. Here we describe a simple method for isolating Arabidopsis nonhost resistance mutants against a nonadapted bacterial pathogen. A RAP2.6 promoter-driven LUC reporter system was developed to replace the tedious bacterial growth assay during the primary screening. The RAP2.6-LUC reporter gene is normally induced by the virulent bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato but not the nonadapted bacterium P. syringae pv phaseolicola. By using this method we isolated 4 mutants displaying strong reporter activity in response to P. syringae pv phaseolicola, which were characterized in some details. ebs1, ebs2, ebs3, and ebs4 (enhanced bacterial susceptibility) were compromised in resistance against P. syringae pv phaseolicola and/or P. syringae pv tomato. In addition, ebs4 showed enhanced hypersensitive response to the incompatible bacterium P. syringae pv tomato (avrB). These results demonstrated that the method is suited for large scale screening for nonhost resistance mutants. Supported by the Shanghai Leading Academic Discipline Project (Grant No. B209) and by a grant from Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to Zhou Jian Min (Grant No. 2003AA210080)