Venus flytrap carnivorous lifestyle builds on herbivore defense strategies
- Felix Bemm1,8,
- Dirk Becker2,
- Christina Larisch2,
- Ines Kreuzer2,
- Maria Escalante-Perez2,
- Waltraud X. Schulze3,
- Markus Ankenbrand1,4,
- Anna-Lena Van de Weyer1,8,
- Elzbieta Krol2,
- Khaled A. Al-Rasheid2,5,
- Axel Mithöfer6,
- Andreas P. Weber7,
- Jörg Schultz1 and
- Rainer Hedrich2
- 1Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, Campus Hubland Nord; Department of Bioinformatics, Biocenter, Am Hubland, University of Würzburg, D-97218 Würzburg, Germany;
- 2Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology and Biophysics, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, 97082 Würzburg, Germany;
- 3Department of Plant Systems Biology, University of Hohenheim, 70593 Stuttgart, Germany;
- 4Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany;
- 5Zoology Department, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia;
- 6Bioorganic Chemistry Department, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Ecology, 07745 Jena, Germany;
- 7Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (CEPLAS), Heinrich-Heine-University, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
- Corresponding author: hedrich{at}botanik.uni-wuerzburg.de
Abstract
Although the concept of botanical carnivory has been known since Darwin's time, the molecular mechanisms that allow animal feeding remain unknown, primarily due to a complete lack of genomic information. Here, we show that the transcriptomic landscape of the Dionaea trap is dramatically shifted toward signal transduction and nutrient transport upon insect feeding, with touch hormone signaling and protein secretion prevailing. At the same time, a massive induction of general defense responses is accompanied by the repression of cell death–related genes/processes. We hypothesize that the carnivory syndrome of Dionaea evolved by exaptation of ancient defense pathways, replacing cell death with nutrient acquisition.
Footnotes
-
[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
-
Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.202200.115.
-
Freely available online through the Genome Research Open Access option.
- Received November 20, 2015.
- Accepted April 7, 2016.
This article, published in Genome Research, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
