Interaction network of antimicrobial peptides of Arabidopsis thaliana, based on high-throughput yeast two-hybrid screening.

One mechanism used by plants to respond to infection is the production of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). In addition to a role in defence, AMPs seem to have other biological functions. Furthermore, the number of cysteine-rich AMP-like peptides appears to have been underpredicted in plant genomes. Such peptides could be involved in plant defence and/or in other biological processes. Here we generated an interaction network between 15 AMPs/AMP-like peptides and ca. 8000 other Arabidopsis thaliana proteins (AtORFeome2.0) and found 53 putative novel interactions. These interactions involve five transcription factors, a subunit of the COP9 signalosome, a heat shock protein, a MAP kinase kinase, a thioredoxin and 4 uncharacterized proteins.