Engineering plants to secrete affinity‐tagged pathogen elicitors for deciphering immune receptor complex or inducing enhanced immunity

Abstract Plant cells mount plenty of pattern‐recognition receptors (PRRs) to detect the microbe‐associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) from potential microbial pathogens. MAMPs are overrepresented by proteinaneous patterns, such as the flg22 peptide from bacterial flagellin. Identification of PRR receptor complex components by forward or reverse genetics can be time/labor‐consuming, and be confounded by functional redundancies. Here, we present a strategy for identifying PRR complex components by engineering plants to inducibly secrete affinity‐tagged proteinaneous MAMPs to the apoplast. The PRR protein complexes bound to self‐secreted MAMPs are enriched through affinity purification and dissected by mass spectrometry. As a proof of principle, we could capture the flg22 receptor FLS2 and co‐receptor BAK1 using Arabidopsis plants secreting FLAG‐tagged flg22 under estradiol induction. Moreover, we identified receptor‐like kinases LIK1 and PEPR1/PEPR2 as potential components in the FLS2 receptor complex, which were further validated by protein–protein interaction assays and the reverse genetics approach. Our study showcases a simple way to biochemically identify endogenous PRR complex components without overexpressing the PRR or using chemical cross‐linkers, and suggests a possible crosstalk between different immune receptors in plants. A modest dose of estradiol can also be applied to inducing enhanced immunity in engineered plants to both bacterial and fungal pathogens.