Fungi disable rice's defenses by destroying one key protein switch
Fang Y, Wang Z, Li W, Wu J, Chen J
Plant Signaling
Rice feeds more than half the world's population, and fungal diseases regularly wipe out enough of the crop to starve millions, so a single genetic fix that blocks many diseases at once could protect harvests everywhere from small family paddies to industrial farms.
Several different fungi that attack rice all use the same trick: they inject a protein scissor that cuts up and destroys a critical relay switch inside rice cells, the same switch the plant needs to sound its immune alarm. When scientists silenced the fungal gene that makes this scissor, the rice plants became resistant to multiple different fungal diseases at once, suggesting one genetic tweak could guard against many threats simultaneously.
Key Findings
SBT1 is a subtilisin-like protease effector secreted by multiple rice fungal pathogens that degrades the host immune signaling protein OsMAPKKKα
OsMAPKKKα normally gets activated by phosphorylation at Thr493 (via OsRLCK185) and passes signals to OsMKK4, forming the OsCERK1-OsRLCK185-OsMAPKKKα-OsMKK4 chitin-sensing immune pathway that SBT1 disrupts by destroying this node
Host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) of SBT1 conferred broad-spectrum resistance against multiple fungal pathogens in rice
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered how fungal diseases disable rice's immune defenses by destroying a key protein switch, and showed that blocking this fungal weapon makes rice resistant to multiple diseases at once.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
A fungal subtilase-like protease SBT1 blocks rice immunity by erasing the MAPKKKα signaling node.
Rice (Oryza sativa) is highly susceptible to a variety of devastating fungal diseases. However, whether these phylogenetically distinct fungal pathogens employ conserved effectors to disrupt common...
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