UC Riverside

Synthetic elicitors are drug-like compounds that are structurally distinct from natural defense elicitors. They can protect plants from diseases by activating host immune responses and can serve as tools for the dissection of the plant immune system as well as leads for the development of environmentally-safe pesticide alternatives. By high-throughput screening, we previously identified 114 synthetic elicitors that activate expression of the pathogen-responsive CaBP22(-333)::GUS reporter gene in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis), 33 of which are [(phenylimino)methyl]phenol (PMP) derivatives or PMP-related compounds. Here we report on the characterization of one of these compounds, 2,4-dichloro-6-{(E)-[(3-methoxyphenyl)imino]methyl}phenol (DPMP). DPMP strongly triggers disease resistance of Arabidopsis against bacterial and oomycete pathogens. By mRNA-seq analysis we found transcriptional profiles triggered by DPMP to resemble typical defense-related responses.