SeptPROTECT: Rapid effector discovery to protect wheat from Septoria tritici blotch disease

SeptPROTECT：快速发现保护小麦免受小麦壳针孢斑枯病的效应子

• 批准号: BB/X016552/1
• 负责人: Graeme Kettles
• 金额: $ 65.9万
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FX016552%2F1
• 关键词: SeptPROTECT; Rapid; effector; discovery; protect

Plants are under continual attack from pathogens in their environment. This is a huge problem in agriculture, where plant health and productivity are crucial for ensuring the food supply.Plants protect themselves from disease with an immune system that detects and blocks invading microbes. However, microbial pathogens are continually evolving to suppress this immune system. One set of tools that pathogens use to evade the plant immune system are small, secreted proteins known as effectors. Plants can regain the upper hand by evolving disease resistance genes that detect pathogen effectors and initiate activation of immune responses.Zymoseptoria tritici is a fungus that causes Septoria tritici blotch disease of wheat plants, a major problem for farmers in the UK. Currently farmers rely on plant resistance genes that serve to recognise the fungus and limit disease development on the leaf. This fungus, however, evolves rapidly and escapes from the recognition and control provided by plant resistance genes. While we currently do not know how the fungus evades plant resistance genes, we hypothesise that the mutation or deletion of fungal effectors is one key way in which this pathogen evades recognition. A critical knowledge gap is that we do not know the identity of the effectors that are recognised by plant resistance proteins. Therefore, it is currently impossible for us to know or predict which changes in the pathogen are a threat to wheat.Identification of Z. tritici effectors has previously been challenging as this fungus is highly diverse, and there are many differences in DNA sequences between different strains. We have developed a simple but powerful method for the identification of fungal effectors recognised by corresponding wheat resistance genes. Here we will apply this new method to identify the fungal effectors recognised by four different resistance genes currently used in commercial UK wheat breeding programmes.The second goal of the project is to identify specific changes that occur in these effectors that enable them to escape recognition by wheat resistance genes. To do this, we will examine the sequence diversity found in fungal effector genes in hundreds of different strains collected directly from UK wheat fields. We will combine this sequence diversity information with knowledge of which strains are able to cause disease on wheat varieties carrying specific resistance genes. Together, this information will enable us to test and conclude which evolutionary changes in the effector genes allow the fungus to "gain virulence" on particular wheat varieties.The final goal of the project is to develop a system whereby information on the presence and frequency of Z. tritici strains able to overcome specific disease resistance genes can rapidly be made publicly available. We will do this by implementing a system similar to that developed for tracking evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the COVID pandemic. Similar tracking systems exists for other plant pathogens, but not for Z. tritici despite its agronomic importance. In the future, this system may allow us to accurately track the gain of virulence mutations in the fungal population across a large geographical area. The benefit of this is that specific wheat varieties could then be chosen to be grown in certain areas, as they were predicted to be most resistant against the local pathogen population.

植物受到病原体环境中的持续攻击。这在农业中是一个巨大的问题，在农业中，植物健康和生产力对于确保食品供应至关重要。植物通过检测和阻止入侵微生物的免疫系统保护自己免受疾病的侵害。但是，微生物病原体正在不断发展以抑制这种免疫系统。病原体用来逃避植物免疫系统的一组工具是小的，分泌的蛋白质，称为效应子。植物可以通过发展疾病的抗性基因来恢复上风，从而检测病原体效应子并启动免疫反应的激活。Tritici是一种真菌，会引起小麦植物的Septoria tritici斑点疾病，这是英国农民的主要问题。目前，农民依靠植物抗性基因来识别真菌并限制叶子上的疾病发展。然而，这种真菌迅速发展，并从植物抗性基因提供的识别和控制中逃脱。尽管我们目前不知道真菌如何逃避植物抗性基因，但我们假设真菌效应子的突变或缺失是这种病原体逃避识别的一种关键方法。一个关键的知识差距是，我们不知道植物抗性蛋白所识别的效应子的身份。因此，目前我们不可能知道或预测病原体的哪些变化是对小麦构成威胁的。我们开发了一种简单但有力的方法，用于识别通过相应的小麦耐药基因识别的真菌效应子。在这里，我们将采用这种新方法来识别由英国商业小麦育种程序中当前使用的四个不同耐药基因识别的真菌效应子。该项目的第二个目标是确定这些效应子中发生的特定变化，使它们能够通过小麦耐药基因逃避识别。为此，我们将研究直接从英国小麦田收集的数百种不同菌株中的真菌效应基因中发现的序列多样性。我们将将这种序列多样性信息与知识结合在一起，了解哪些菌株能够在携带特定抗性基因的小麦品种上引起疾病。这些信息将使我们能够测试并得出结论效应基因的哪些进化变化，使真菌能够在特定的小麦品种上“获得毒力”。该项目的最终目标是开发一个系统的系统，从而使Tritici菌株的存在和频率能够快速地公开获得特定的抗病抗病基因。我们将通过实施类似于用于跟踪Covid大流行期间SARS-COV-2病毒演化的系统来做到这一点。其他植物病原体也存在类似的跟踪系统，但尽管具有农艺重要性，但对于Z. tritici来说却不存在。将来，该系统可能使我们能够准确跟踪大型地理区域真菌种群中毒力突变的增益。这样做的好处是，可以选择特定的小麦品种在某些地区生长，因为预计它们对局部病原体的抗性最具耐药性。