Contrasting Roles of Plant GATA21/22 Transcriptional Regulators in Defense Against Fungal and Bacterial Pathogens.

The GATA family of transcriptional regulators is broadly conserved between plant and animal kingdoms. Here, we report that some of the GATA genes are suppressed in Arabidopsis during fungal and bacterial infections. However, strikingly, GATA21 and GATA22 encode positive regulators of defense against necrotrophic fungal pathogens while acting antagonistically against hemibiotrophic bacterial pathogens. Following infection by Verticillium dahliae, the gata21 and gata22 mutants exhibit defective growth in bolt length and in total silique number. These results suggest that GATA21 and GATA22 regulate growth and reproduction in Arabidopsis both during normal growth and in response to infection by pathogens. Because the GATA family is conserved, our findings have broad implications for the role of GATA transcription regulators in integrating signals from biotic interactions with those for growth and development. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.