Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 7, 2025

Imaging Spatial Reorganization of a MAPK Signaling Pathway Using the Tobacco Transient Expression System
Published on: March 20, 2016
PP2C Phosphatase Pic6 Suppresses MAPK Activation and Disease Resistance in Tomato
Joydeep Chakraborty1, Guy Sobol1, Fan Xia2,3
1School of Plant Sciences and Food Security, The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel.
Abstract:
Type 2C protein phosphatases (PP2Cs) are essential for regulating plant immune responses to pathogens. Our study focuses on the tomato PP2C-immunity associated candidate 6 (Pic6), elucidating its role in negatively regulating pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) signaling pathways in tomato. Using reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), we observed that treatment with microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs)-flg22 and flgII-28-significantly increased Pic6 mRNA levels in wild-type (RG-PtoR) tomato plants. Pic6 features a conserved N-terminal kinase-interacting motif (KIM) and a C-terminal PP2C domain. We produced variants of Pic6 with mutations in these regions, demonstrating their involvements in negatively regulating tomato immunity. Agrobacterium-mediated transient overexpression of Pic6 resulted in enhanced growth of the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pathovar tomato (Pst) strain DC3000ΔhopQ1-1 compared with a yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) control. Additionally, Pic6 overexpression inhibited mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation in response to flg22 and flgII-28 treatments. Importantly, Pic6 exhibited phosphatase activity and interacted with tomato Mkk1/Mkk2 proteins and dephosphorylated them in a KIM-dependent manner. Furthermore, we generated RG-pic6 loss-of-function mutants by CRISPR/Cas9, revealing that the absence of Pic6 heightened MAPK activity and increased resistance to Xanthomonas euvesicatoria strain 85-10 (Xe 85-10) when compared with the wild-type (RG-PtoR) plants. Transcript analyses showed that after flg22/flgII-28 treatment, PTI-reporter genes NAC and Osmotin were significantly upregulated in RG-pic6 mutants in comparison to the wild-type (RG-PtoR) plants. Overall, our findings indicate that Pic6 acts as a negative regulator of MAPK signaling and plays a pivotal role in modulating tomato immunity against bacterial pathogens. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Related Concept Videos
Interactions Between Signaling Pathways
Convergence and divergence, and cross-talk between signaling pathways
Two distinct signaling pathways can converge on a single functional unit, which may either be a single protein or a complex of proteins. The response is either functionally distinct or synergistic between the two pathways but different from the response...
Abnormal Proliferation
MAPK Signaling Cascades
Microtubule Associated Proteins (MAPs)
mTOR Signaling and Cancer Progression
The mTOR pathway or the...
The JAK-STAT Signaling Pathway

