Beans use an immune receptor to call in airstrikes on caterpillars
摘要
研究发现，植物在遭受毛虫啃食时，会释放挥发性有机化合物以吸引天敌。华盛顿大学团队通过实验室和墨西哥田间实验，在菜豆中鉴定出一个免疫受体，该受体负责协调抗毛虫防御系统。当毛虫取食时，其唾液中的特定肽段（如inceptin和In11）作为食草动物相关分子模式（HAMPs）被植物识别。这些肽段实际上是植物叶绿体ATP合酶的片段，经毛虫消化酶处理后随唾液返回叶片表面
For decades, scientists have understood that plants can release volatile organic compounds—essentially airborne chemical signals—to attract the natural enemies of the things that eat them, like caterpillars. What we didn’t know was exactly how a plant translates the physical act of being eaten into a specific, predator-summoning distress signal.
“[One] thing we didn’t know is how the plant detects the caterpillar in the first place,” says Adam Steinbrenner, a biologist at the University of Washington. Now, after years of experimenting with common bean plants in the lab and in the agricultural fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, Steinbrenner’s team pinpointed a single immune receptor that orchestrates its anti-caterpillar defense system.
Drooling caterpillars
When an herbivorous insect like a caterpillar feeds on a plant, it introduces its saliva straight into the plant's damaged tissues. This saliva contains biological clues called HAMPs: herbivore-associated molecular patterns. One of the HAMPs molecules is a peptide called inceptin, and there’s an 11-amino acid fragment of inceptin named In11, as well. Both of them turn out to be a fragment of the ATP synthase found in chloroplasts—basically a piece of one of the plant’s own proteins. As the caterpillar ingests the leaf, its gut enzymes chop up the plant's cellular engines and their pieces, including In11, are regurgitated back onto the leaf’s surface, albeit at extremely small concentrations.
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