Isolation and gene expression analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana mutants with constitutive expression of ATL2, an early elicitor-response RING-H2 zinc-finger gene.

Genes with unstable transcripts often encode proteins that play important regulatory roles. ATL2 is a member of a multigene family coding highly related RING-H2 zinc-finger proteins that may function as E3 ubiquitin ligases. ATL2 mRNA accumulation occurs rapidly and transiently after incubation with elicitors of pathogen response. We screened 50,000 M(2) families from a line that carries a fusion of pATL2 to the GUS reporter gene and isolated five mutants, which we named eca (expresión constitutiva de ATL2), that showed constitutive expression of the reporter gene. One mutant exhibits a drastic stunted phenotype while the other four grow similarly to wild type. Two early chitin-induced genes and known pathogenesis-related genes such as NPR1, PAL, and CHS are activated in all the mutants whereas members of the ATL family and PR-1 and PDF2.1, which are markers of the salicylic acid (SA) jasmonate (JA) defense-response pathways, display differential expression between the mutants. These observations indicate that the ECA gene products may function in the early steps of an elicitor-response pathway, although some of them may function at other stages on the SA or JA defense-response pathways. Likewise, the fact that ATL2 and other members of the ATL family are activated in eca mutants links the induction of this putative class of ubiquitin ligases to plant defense signaling pathways.