Data from: Brassinosteroids act as positive regulators of autophagy pathways in response to chilling stress in tomato

Autophagy, a highly conserved and regulated catabolic process involved in the degradation of protein aggregates, plays critical roles in eukaryotes. In plants, autophagy has been well studied in stress responses including nutrient deficiency, salt and drought stress. Whilst, multiple molecular processes can induce or suppress autophagy, however, the mechanism of its regulation by phytohormones is little known. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are steroid phytohormones which play crucial roles in plant response to stresses. We used diverse techniques, including transcriptional suppression, CRISPR/Cas9, histochemical and cytochemical methodologies and gene transcript analysis, to investigate the role of BRs in autophagy in response to chilling stress in tomato. Here, we show that BRs and their signaling element BZR1 induce autophagy in tomato under chilling stress. Cold increased the stability of BZR1, which was promoted by BRs. Cold- and BR-induced BZR1 stability activates the transcription of several ATG genes by directly binding to the promoters of those genes, resulting in autophagy formation. Furthermore, silencing of these ATGs compromised BR-induced cold tolerance with increased accumulation of several functional proteins and reduced accumulation of oxidative proteins. These results strongly suggest that BRs regulate autophagy by BZR1-dependent manner in response to chilling stress in tomato.Transcripts of ATG genesTranscripts of ATG genes in Fig. 2D, Fig. 4D, and Fig. S3