Cross-kingdom comparative proteomics reveals conserved deployment of T2-ribonucleases during wound responses in plants and animals

Abstract Wound healing is essential to the survival of all living organisms, and yet the molecular components of wound responses are almost always studied in one organism at a time, thus limiting opportunities for discovering conserved pathways and potential novel gene discovery. Here, we developed a reciprocal plant-animal proteomic strategy to discover whether these evolutionarily distant organisms might deploy homologous proteins during their wound response. This approach identified T2 ribonucleases as a conserved wound-responsive protein family between zebrafish and Arabidopsis. Our functional analysis then revealed a previously unrecognised role for zebrafish Rnaset2 in macrophage-mediated clearance of cell debris during wound repair and identified a previously unrecognised role for Arabidopsis RNS1 in regulating wound-triggered antibacterial defence. This study demonstrates how comparative plant and animal wound proteomics can identify understudied, conserved wound-responsive protein families and reveal previously unrecognised functions with potential relevance to tissue repair and crop resistance.