Response of cell wall composition and RNA-seq transcriptome to methyl-jasmonate in Brachypodium distachyon callus

Jasmonic acid (JA) signalling is required for many stress responses in plants, inducing large changes in the transcriptome, including up-regulation of transcripts associated with lignification. However less is known about the response to JA of grass cell walls and the monocot-specific features of arabinoxylan (AX) synthesis and acylation by ferulic acid (FA) and para-coumaric acid (pCA). Here we show that methyl-jasmonate (MeJA) induces moderate increases in FA monomer, >50% increases in FA dimers and 5-6 fold increases in pCA ester-linked to cell walls in Brachypodium callus. Direct measurement of arabinose acylated by pCA (Araf-pCA) indicated that most or all the increase in cell wall pCA was due to pCA ester linked to AX. Analysis of the RNA-seq transcriptome of the callus response showed that these cell wall changes were accompanied by up-regulation of members of the GT61 and BAHD gene families implicated in AX decoration and acylation; two BAHD paralogues were among the most up-regulated cell wall genes (7- and 5-fold) after 24h exposure to MeJA. Similar responses to JA of orthologous BAHD and GT61 transcripts are present in the RiceXPro public expression dataset for rice seedlings, showing they are not specific to Brachypodium or to callus. The large response of AX-pCA to MeJA may therefore indicate an important role for this linkage in response of primary cell walls of grasses to JA signalling.