Trends in Plant Science: A high-throughput screening strategy for non-toxic genes of multi-pile rust fungus and resistance genes of maize to southern rust was proposed

The southern rust of maize caused by the infestation of Puccinia polysora underw is widely epidemic in the world, which seriously threatens the safe production of maize in China and the world, and sustainable control of maize southern rust urgently needs reasonable and effective cultivation and planting of resistant varieties
.

Recently, the monitoring and control team of fungal diseases of food crops published a review paper entitled "Gene-for-gene-mediated resistance to southern corn rust in maize" online in Trends in Plant Science, systematically reviewing the genes (RppC and RppK) of maize resistance to southern rust and the non-toxic genes corresponding to pathogenic bacteria (AvrRppC and AvrRppK) at the gene-to-gene level, and proposed a high-throughput research strategy for screening non-toxic genes and host resistance genes of pathogenic bacteria: (1) First, multiple pile of epidemic physiological small species of rust fungus were selected to inoculate the genetic diversity inbred line population of maize, and the disease-resistant strains were screened; (2) Then, the effector protein of the epidemic physiological small species of multiple pile rust species is expressed instantaneously in the disease-resistant inbred protoplast, and the effector protein that can produce hypersensitive response (HR) is used as a candidate non-toxic protein; (3) Secondly, the candidate non-toxic protein is further expressed instantaneously in the protoplast of the inbred line, the candidate protein that can also cause HR in the inbred line is removed, and the non-toxic protein that specifically causes HR in the disease-resistant inbred line is identified; (4) Finally, non-toxic proteins were used as bait to screen maize disease resistance genes
by yeast double hybridization and immune affinity precipitation.
The cloning of pathogenic bacteria non-toxic genes and host disease resistance genes will be of great significance
to accelerate the breeding process of southern rust resistance in maize and implement dynamic monitoring of the population structure of multi-pile rust fungus.

Mei Jie, a postdoctoral fellow jointly trained by the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Shenzhen Institute of Agricultural Genomics, was the first author of the paper, Professor Liu Wende was the corresponding author of the paper, and researcher Zhou Shaoqun of the Shenzhen Institute of Agricultural Genomics participated in the work
.
The research was supported
by the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32061143033).

High-throughput screening strategies for non-toxic genes and maize disease resistance genes in multi-pile rust bacteria