Increasing the resilience of the plant immune system to a warming climate

Increased plant disease epidemics due to global warming pose serious threats to agricultural and natural ecosystems. Our warming climate impacts numerous aspects of plant physiology, including immune signaling and disease resistance. However, a detailed mechanistic understanding of warm temperature-modulated immunity and defence responses is only starting to emerge. In my talk, I will focus on the elevated temperature-vulnerable pathway mediated by the plant hormone salicylic acid (SA), which is central to defences against various pests and pathogens. We have recently identified a novel thermosensitive mechanism governing the SA pathway and overall plant disease resistance. Specifically, high temperatures suppress the in vivo formation of GBPL3 defence-activated biomolecular condensates (GDACs). GDACs are required to induce expression of CBP60g and SARD1, which encode master transcription factors of plant immunity. Remarkably, CBP60g/SARD1 gene transcription is the primary, rate-limiting step in the vulnerability of plant immunity to warm temperatures. We then leveraged these fundamental insights to genetically strengthen the plant immune system. Altogether, our findings could potentially provide a broadly applicable genetic roadmap to developing climate-resilient plant disease resistance for our changing world. Increasing the resilience of plant immunity to a warming climate Nature 607: 339–344 (2022) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04902-y