S-PROTECT: Tissue-specific repression of S factor expression to enhance wheat disease resistance

S-PROTECT：组织特异性抑制 S 因子表达以增强小麦抗病性

• 批准号: EP/Y027566/1
• 负责人: Diane Saunders
• 金额: $ 16.19万
• 依托单位: John Innes Centre
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FY027566%2F1
• 关键词: PROTECT; Tissue; specific; repression; factor

Wheat rusts are known as the "polio of agriculture" due to the threat they pose to wheat production worldwide. With a severe lack of resistance in European germplasm and issues around fungicide resistance and/or restrictions there is an urgent need to develop alternative strategies to enhance resilience. One alternative and likely more durable strategy is to disrupt host genes that encode susceptibility (S) factors. Pathogens target S factors to support their own establishment or colonization and/or modulate host defence responses. Thus, S factor disruption can confer a fundamental loss of susceptibility. In our ERC STG we developed a novel strategy for identification of S factors and found a series of host genes that play essential roles in supporting wheat rust colonization. However, disruption of S genes can have deleterious effects on yield or plant growth, which has prevented exploitation of many promising S factors in plant breeding. This PoC proposal will focus on overcoming this critical limitation, by employing precision transcriptional regulation. We will develop this approach into a platform technology for assessing S factor expression in wheat. Furthermore, we will use our long-standing connections at JIC will all major seed companies (including multinationals) to assess the commercial viability of this approach. The invention may also have broad applicability beyond wheat, which will be clarified during the project by identifying homologs of our previously characterised S factors and a strategy for precision transcriptional regulation in rice, soybean, maize, cotton and other cereals.

小麦锈病因其对全球小麦生产构成的威胁而被称为“农业脊髓灰质炎”。由于欧洲种质严重缺乏抗性以及杀菌剂抗性和/或限制问题，迫切需要制定替代策略来增强抵御能力。一种替代且可能更持久的策略是破坏编码易感性（S）因子的宿主基因。病原体以 S 因子为目标来支持其自身的建立或定殖和/或调节宿主防御反应。因此，S 因子破坏会导致敏感性的根本丧失。在我们的 ERC STG 中，我们开发了一种识别 S 因子的新策略，并发现了一系列在支持小麦锈病定植中发挥重要作用的宿主基因。然而，S 基因的破坏可能会对产量或植物生长产生有害影响，从而阻碍了许多有前途的 S 因子在植物育种中的利用。该 PoC 提案将重点通过采用精确转录调控来克服这一关键限制。我们将把这种方法发展成评估小麦中 S 因子表达的平台技术。此外，我们将利用我们在 JIC 与所有主要种子公司（包括跨国公司）的长期联系来评估这种方法的商业可行性。本发明还可能具有小麦以外的广泛适用性，这将在项目期间通过鉴定我们先前表征的S因子的同源物以及在水稻​​、大豆、玉米、棉花和其他谷物中精确转录调控的策略来阐明。