The protective role of silicon in the Arabidopsis-powdery mildew pathosystem

The role and essentiality of silicon (Si) in plant biology have been debated for >150 years despite numerous reports describing its beneficial properties. To obtain unique insights regarding the effect of Si on plants, we performed a complete transcriptome analysis of both control and powdery mildew-stressed Arabidopsis plants, with or without Si application, using a 44K microarray. Surprisingly, the expression of all but two genes was unaffected by Si in control plants, a result contradicting reports of a possible direct effect of Si as a fertilizer. In contrast, inoculation of plants, treated or not with Si, altered the expression of a set of nearly 4,000 genes. After functional categorization, many of the up-regulated genes were defense-related, whereas a large proportion of down-regulated genes were involved in primary metabolism. Regulated defense genes included R genes, stress-related transcription factors, genes involved in signal transduction, the biosynthesis of stress hormones (SA, JA, ethylene), and the metabolism of reactive oxygen species. In inoculated plants treated with Si, the magnitude of down-regulation was attenuated by >25%, an indication of stress alleviation. Our results demonstrate that Si treatment had no effect on the metabolism of unstressed plants, suggesting a nonessential role for the element but that it has beneficial properties attributable to modulation of a more efficient response to pathogen stress.