Fig. 6: Validamycin A induced biomass productivity is dependent on trehalose-mediated autophagy.

a Accumulation of above ground dry biomass for 3-week-old control seedlings (green), seedlings treated with 3 mM 3-MA (3-methyladenine) (orange), 30 µM ValA (purple) or both 3 mM 3-MA and 30 µM ValA (pink) measured in grams (g). (N = 5 individual plants). b Accumulation of trehalose in W22 and homozygous atg12-2 mutant seedlings across treatments and conditions (N = 6 individual plants). Error bars in panels a and b indicate standard deviation. For panels a, b, statistical significance between indicated comparisons were determined by two tailed t-test. c Change in the abundance of free ATG8 (upper band) and ATG8-PE conjugate (lower band) in the roots of three week old maize plants treated with ValA relative to control plants measured via immunoblot. Total protein loading control is shown in the lower panel. PLD: phospholipase D treatment which digests ATG8-PE conjugation. S: Cellular soluable fraction separated by ultracentrifugation. The assay shown in panel c was repeated twice with consistent results. d Changes in the above ground dry weight, measured in grams (g), of W22 and homozygous atg12-2 seedlings at 21 days after planting in response to validamycin A (ValA) treatment (N = 15 independent plants measured across three separate experiments). All box plots shown in panel d are defined as in the Fig. 1 legend. kDa = kiloDaltons. Statistical comparisons were conducted using two-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.