Phospholipid metabolism and multipathogen resistance in crops - Guotian Li
Guotian Li
Professor, National Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Huazhong Agricultural University, China
- Titre : Phospholipid metabolism and multipathogen resistance in crops
- Date : 11 avril 2025, 11h00
- Lieu : Salle des séminaires de l'IBVM, UMR BFP, centre Inrae de Villenave d'Ornon
- Invitation : Yohan Boutte, UMR LBM
Abstract
Phospholipids are important structural and signaling molecules in plants and are crucial in vesicle trafficking and pathogen-host interactions. Here, we demonstrate that by genome editing a phospholipid biosynthetic gene we achieved broad-spectrum disease resistance in rice (Oryza sativa). We first isolated a lesion mimic mutant (LMM) from a mutagenized rice population, demonstrated that a 29-bp deletion in a gene we named RESISTANCE TO BLAST1 (RBL1) caused this phenotype and showed that this mutation caused a ca. 20-fold reduction in yield. RBL1 encodes a cytidine diphosphate diacylglycerol (CDP-DAG) synthase required for phospholipid biosynthesis.
Mutation of RBL1 results in reduced levels of phosphatidylinositol (PI) and its derivative PI(4,5)P2. Rice PI(4,5)P2 is enriched in cellular structures specifically associated with effector secretion and fungal infection, suggesting a role as a disease susceptibility factor. Using targeted mutagenesis, we obtained an allele of RBL1, named RBL1Δ12, which confers broad-spectrum resistance but does not decrease yield in a model rice variety as assessed in small-scale field trials. Because RBL1 is conserved in plants, editing of RBL1 homologs is likely applicable to diverse crops. RBL1 is an atypical R gene, I will also talk about the trans-crop applications of atypical R genes and guided promoter editing of RBL1 for multipathogen resistance.
Related publications
(1) Gan Sha#, Peng Sun#, Xiaojing Kong, Xinyu Han, Qiping Sun, Laetitia Fouillen, Juan Zhao, Yun Li, Lei Yang, Yin Wang, Qiuwen Gong, Yaru Zhou, Wenqing Zhou, Rashmi Jain, Jie Gao, Renliang Huang, Xiaoyang Chen, Lu Zheng, Wanying Zhang, Ziting Qin, Qi Zhou, Qingdong Zeng, Kabin Xie, Jiandi Xu, Tsan-Yu Chiu, Liang Guo, Jenny C. Mortimer, Yohann Boutté, Qiang Li, Zhensheng Kang, Pamela C. Ronald*, Guotian Li*. Genome editing of a rice CDP-DAG synthase confers multipathogen resistance. Nature, 2023, 618, 1017–1023.
(2) Qiping Sun, Yongxin Xiao, Le Song, Lei Yang, Yin Wang, Wei Yang, Qun Yang, Kabin Xie,
Meng Yuan, Guotian Li*. Mutation of OsCDS5 confers broad-spectrum disease resistance in rice, Mol Plant Pathol, 2024, 25(e13430)
(3) Gan Sha, Guotian Li*. Effector translocation and rational design of disease resistance. Trends Microbiol, 2023, 31(12):1202-1205.
(4) Peng Sun, Xinyu Han, Ricky J. Milne*, and Guotian Li*. Trans-crop applications of atypical R genes for multipathogen resistance. Trends Plant Sci, 2024.
(5) Yaru Zhou, Juan Zhao, Lei Yang, Ruiqing Bi, Ziting Qin, Peng Sun, Renjian Li, Mengfei Zhao, Yin Wang, Guang Chen, Hu Wan, Lu Zheng, Xiao-Lin Chen, Guanghui Wang, Qiang Li, Guotian Li*. Doxorubicin inhibits phosphatidylserine decarboxylase and confers broad-spectrum antifungal activity. New Phytol, 2023, 239(1):255-270.