Abstract: Herbivorous insects and pathogens cause severe damage to rice tissues, affecting its yield and grain quality. Damaged cells trigger downstream defense responses through various signals. Extracellular adenosine 5′-triphosphate (eATP), a signaling molecule released during mechanical cell damage, is considered a constitutive damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP), which is crucial for initiating plant defense responses. Thus, understanding how rice plants cope with DAMPs such as eATP is essential. Here, we found that exogenous ATP affects rice growth and development, cell wall components, chloroplast development, and cell death. Subsequent global transcriptome analysis revealed that several pathways were involved in the eATP response, including genes related to cell surface receptors, cell wall organization, chlorophyll biosynthesis, heat and temperature stimulation, epigenetic pathways, and the reactive oxygen species metabolic process. Cell surface receptors, including members of the lectin receptor-like kinases (LecRKs), were found to participate in the eATP response. We further investigated the ATP-induced genes in T-DNA activation mutants of LecRK, demonstrating that OsLecRKs are clearly involved in eATP signaling in rice. This study confirms a DAMP-mediated transcriptional response in plants and provides novel candidates for rapid progress in rice resistant breeding in response to insect herbivores and pathogens.

Key words: extracellular ATP, damage-associated molecular pattern, RNA-sequencing, transcriptome analysis, rice