The mechanisms by which herbivore-attacked plants activate their defenses are well studied. While little is known about the regulatory mechanisms that allow them to control their defensive investment and avoid a defensive overshoot. Recently, Dr. Hu Lingfei and Ph.D. student Ye Meng et al. from Prof. Lou Yonggen’s lab in the Institute of Insect Sciences demonstrated that a WRKY gene, OsWRKY53, is a regulator of herbivore-induced defense responses in rice. Through silencing and overexpressing OsWRKY53, they found that it negatively regulates MPK3/MPK6 activity as well as the levels of herbivore-induced JA, JA-Ile and ethylene, which subsequently mediates the activity of trypsin protease inhibitors and resistance to the striped stem borer (SSB) Chilo suppressalis. Their study reveals that OsWRKY53 is an important herbivore-responsive component that functions as a negative feedback modulator of MPK3/MPK6 which allows rice plants to control the magnitude of defensive investment against a chewing herbivore during early signaling.
This paper entitled “The rice transcription factor WRKY53 suppresses herbivore-induced defenses by acting as a negative feedback modulator of map kinase activity” was published online in Plant Physiology(http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/early/2015/10/09/pp.15.01090.abstract?keytype=ref&siteid=plant&ijkey=d8QAO3zD423c6). The study was jointly sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31330065) and the Innovation Research Team Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31321063).
