The circadian clock regulates receptor-mediated immune responses to an herbivore-associated molecular pattern.

Plants activate induced defenses through the recognition of molecular patterns. Like pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), herbivore-associated molecular patterns (HAMPs) can be recognized by cell surface pattern recognition receptors leading to defensive transcriptional changes in host plants. Herbivore-induced defensive outputs are regulated by the circadian clock, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unknown. To investigate how the plant circadian clock regulates transcriptional reprogramming of a specific HAMP-induced pathway, we characterized the daytime and nighttime transcriptional response to caterpillar-derived In11 peptide, in the legume crop cowpea (). Using diurnal and free-running conditions, we found that daytime In11 elicitation resulted in stronger late-induced gene expression than nighttime. Plants with a conditional arrhythmic phenotype in constant light (LL) conditions lost time-of-day dependent responses to In11 treatment, and this was associated with arrhythmic expression of circadian clock core transcription factor and . Reporter assays with VuLHY homologs indicated that they interact with the promoter of daytime In11-induced via a canonical and a polymorphic CCA1/LHY Binding Site (CBS), consistent with a mechanism of direct regulation by circadian clock transcription factors. This study improves our understanding of the time-dependent mechanisms that regulate herbivore-induced gene expression.