Abstract:
The immune system of animals and of plants is activated upon the perception of conserved pathogen associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). One example of a classical PAMP is the Flagellin peptide flg22, which is recognized by the receptor like kinase FLS2 in Arabidopsis thaliana. The binding of flg22 leads to the activation of FLS2, which then heterodimerizes with BAK1, another LRR-RLK. BAK1 was first identified as a co-receptor of BRI1 to regulate the Brassinolide dependent pathway involved in plant developmental processes. More recently BAK1 and its closest homolog were shown to be also involved in cell death control. The cell death phenotype could be observed in bak1-null mutants which showed an accelerated cell death after infection with necrotrophic fungi. One aim of the presented work was to identify more BAK1 interacting proteins involved in cell death control. A first approach was a liquid tandem mass spectrometry analysis of co-purified BAK1-interaction partner in the cell death control pathway in A. thaliana. Throughout this approach two further LRR-RLKs, BIP89 (BAK1 interacting protein 89) and BIL3 (BIP89 like 3), were found. Both genes showed a pathogen responsive expression, whereupon BIL3 was downregulated and BIP89, like BAK1, was induced after pathogen challenge. The identified interaction between BAK1 and BIP89 was verified by Co-immunoprecipitation experiments in transgenic tobacco. Moreover the kinases also interacted in the Yeast two hybrid droplet assays and in the in vitro kinase assays. The kinases of BIP89, BIL1 and BIL3 didn’t show any activity their selves, but were phosphorylated by the BAK1 kinase domain. To discover the role of the interaction between BAK1 and BIP89 in the cell death control, the influence of the phosphorylation was analyzed. Therefore the BAK1-kinase mutants were tested in the Y2H system, in in vitro kinase assays and in tobacco Co-IPs. It was shown that the interaction was dependent on the BAK1 activity. Furthermore there was an impairment of interaction between BAK1 and BIP89 in tobacco and Y2H experiments upon mutation in the amino acid residue T312 in BAK1.In following experiments the in vitro phosphorylation sites of BIP89, BIL1 and BIL3 phosphorylated by BAK1, were identified. BIP89 showed a phosphorylation along the whole cytoplasmatic domain. Additionally new phosphorylated amino acids in BAK1 were found. Some of the identified sites of BIP89 were mutated and their influence on the interaction and phosphorylation behavior was analyzed. The exchanges in the aminoacid S330A/D in BIP89 (corresponding to residue T312 in BAK1) lead to a weakening of the interaction between the full length proteins of BAK1 and BIP89. Moreover the interaction between BIP89 and BAK1 was not dependent on the phosphorylation of BIP89. So the phosphorylation on different amino acids in BAK1- and BIP89- kinase seems only to play a partially role in regulating their interaction.