Recommend Plant Signaling & Behavior (PS&B) to your librarian for 2008. Download form here.

PS&B is the official journal of the Society for Plant Neurobiology. Full membership ($60 annually) and student membership ($30 annually) include online access to the journal. Click here to join.

Email this page

Print this page

Article Addendum

Brassinosteroid-independent functions of the BRI1-associated kinase BAK1/SERK3

Birgit Kemmerling and Thorsten Nürnberger

volume 3 | issue 2

february 2008
Pages: 116 - 118

Purchase article for $19

Subscribe to this journal for $79/year

» Log in

Eukaryotes have evolved programmed cell death (PCD) mechanisms that play important roles in both, development and immunity. We demonstrated a requirement for the Arabidopsis thaliana leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase (LRR-RLK), BAK1/SERK3 (BRI1-Associated receptor Kinase 1/Somatic Embryogenesis Receptor Kinase 3) in regulating the containment of microbial infection-induced necrosis. BAK1-deficient plants showed constitutive expression of defense-related genes and developed spreading cell death upon infection by necrotizing pathogens that result in enhanced susceptibility to necrotrophic pathogens. This reaction was not inducible by exposition of bak1 mutants to general stresses but appeared to be solely inducible by necrotizing pathogen infection. BAK1 is known to interact with the brassinosteroid receptor, BRI1, and thereby facilitates plant growth and development in a brassinolide (BL)-dependent manner. Surprisingly, the cell death-related phenotype in bak1 mutants is brassinolide-independent. In this addendum we want to present recent new data on BAK1 and discuss its role as a general regulator in plant processes being as diverse as brassinosteroid signaling in development, perception of pathogen associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), and cell-death control in innate immunity.

Authors

Birgit Kemmerling

ZMBP Plant Biochemistry, University Tübingen, Germany

Thorsten Nürnberger