Pseudouridine as a Key Player in Plant Immune Response – BSURF 2023, Week 6

Pseudouridine, an isomer of the uracil nucleotide, is a common RNA modification. However, its function is not fully understood, especially during plant immunity. In collaboration with Dr. Chuan He’s laboratory in University of Chicago, we applied a new technique, BID-Seq, to quantitatively measure pseudouridine modification in plant RNAs at base resolution. This revealed that this modification is widely present in plant mRNAs. After being used in COVID vaccines in previous studies, it was found that pseudouridine helped in suppressing immune responses in humans from the vaccines. Due to this, we hypothesize that mRNA pseudouridylation plays a role in regulating plant immune response as well. In order to understand the impact of pseudouridine on plant immunity, we have taken seedlings of Arabidopsis and subjected them to various pathogen treatments. By measuring the pseudouridine levels in mRNAs, we are looking to see dynamic changes of pseudouridine levels which could be an important trigger for the plant’s immune response. Furthermore, we seek to identify what proteins are involved in the pseudouridine synthetic pathway during immunity by using a tagger on known proteins involved in the pathway. If we can understand the importance and mechanisms of pseudouridine in plant immunity, we believe it would be a significant step towards strengthening agriculture as understanding plant immune response mechanisms to pathogens will help us benefit our crops which ultimately will benefit our communities.