The Arabidopsis neutral amino acid transporter UmamiT20 confers <i>Botrytis cinerea</i> susceptibility
Plant pathogens rely on host-derived nutrients for proliferation, yet the mechanisms by which hosts supply these nutrients remain incompletely understood. Here, we show that infection of Arabidopsis thaliana by the necrotrophic fungus Botrytis cinerea leads to increased accumulation of the amino acid transporter UmamiT20 in leaf veins surrounding the lesions. Functional assays demonstrate that UmamiT20 mediates amino acid transport of a wide range of neutral amino acids. Consistent with a role during infection, umamiT20 knockout mutants displayed significantly reduced susceptibility to B. cinerea. Our findings extend the concept of transporter-mediated susceptibility beyond the SWEET sugar transporters in bacterial blight of rice, cassava, and cotton, to a necrotrophic fungus and implicate nutrients other than sucrose, namely amino acids, in nutrition or nutrient signaling related to immunity. We hypothesize that stacking of mutations in different types of susceptibility-related nutrient carriers to interfere with access to several nutrients may enable engineering of robust pathogen resistance in a wide range of plant-pathogen systems.
Authors
- Matthew J. Prior (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2246-7974)
- Jane E. Parker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4700-6480)
- Federica Locci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5443-0717)
- Guillaume Pilot (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7520-1059)
- Keiko Kuwata (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8734-1614)
- Qiang Cai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9219-9608)
- Hailing Jin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5778-5193)
- Diana Weidauer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7578-2770)
- Margaret Bezrutczyk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8009-3635)
- Ji Yun Kim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2776-5970)
- Martin C. Jonikas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9519-6055)
- Wolf Bernd Frommer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6465-0115)
- Jui-Yu Liao
- Ye Hong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2793-6699)
- Chen Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5758-9103)
- Chengsong Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1289-9696)
Institutions
- University of California, Riverside (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- Clinton College (US)
- Rowan-Cabarrus Community College (US)
- Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (DE)
- Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (DE)
- Laboratoire des Biomolécules (FR)
- Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (DE)
- Sungkyunkwan University (KR)
- Virginia Tech (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Experimental Botany
- Published
- 2025-11-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/eraf496
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Plant-Microbe Interactions and Immunity
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.50
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- National Research Foundation
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korea
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture