Transcriptomic biomarkers reveal jasmonic and salicylic acid states under field herbivory in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Systematically varying combinatorial salicylic acid and jasmonic acid concentrations in Arabidopsis thaliana reveals 43 distinct, combination-specific transcriptional signatures beyond simple SA–JA antagonism.

• Why it matters: Plants must integrate SA and JA signalling to form defence states, but field environments make it unclear how hormone concentration profiles map onto transcriptomic states linked to herbivory.
• What they did: The study generated transcriptomic data across systematically varied SA and JA concentrations, then trained and validated machine-learning transcriptomic biomarkers to independently quantify SA and JA response states from gene-expression profiles.
• The result: In field-grown Arabidopsis thaliana, inferred SA/JA response states are associated with herbivore abundance and with herbivore co-occurrence patterns on individual plants, enabling decoding of hormonal responses from field transcriptomes.

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