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

小麦锈病被称为“农业脊髓灰质炎”，因为它们对全球小麦生产构成威胁。由于欧洲种质资源严重缺乏抗性，以及围绕杀真菌剂抗性和/或限制的问题，迫切需要开发替代战略来增强复原力。另一种可能更持久的策略是破坏编码易感性（S）因子的宿主基因。病原体靶向S因子以支持其自身的建立或定殖和/或调节宿主防御反应。因此，S因子破坏可导致易感性的根本丧失。在我们的ERC STG中，我们开发了一种鉴定S因子的新策略，并发现了一系列在支持小麦锈病定殖中起重要作用的宿主基因。然而，S基因的破坏会对产量或植物生长产生有害影响，这阻碍了许多有前途的S因子在植物育种中的利用。这项新的建议将集中在克服这一关键的限制，通过采用精确的转录调控。我们将把这种方法发展成一种评估小麦中S因子表达的平台技术。此外，我们将利用我们在JIC的长期关系，将所有主要种子公司（包括跨国公司）评估这种方法的商业可行性。本发明还可以具有超出小麦的广泛适用性，这将在项目期间通过鉴定我们先前表征的S因子的同源物和用于在水稻、大豆、玉米、棉花和其他谷物中精确转录调控的策略来阐明。

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.