A designer rice NLR immune receptor confers resistance to the rice blast fungus carrying noncorresponding avirulence effectors
Yang Liu, Xin Zhang, Guixin Yuan, Dongli Wang, Yangyang Zheng, Mengqi Ma, Liwei Guo, Vijai Bhadauria, You‐Liang Peng, Junfeng Liu
Abstract
Significance In this study, we generated a mutant of the rice nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immunity receptor RGA5 by engineering its heavy metal–associated domain that recognizes the noncorresponding Magnaporthe oryzae Avrs- and ToxB-like effector AvrPib and confers resistance in transgenic rice to the blast fungus isolates with AvrPib, which is known to trigger blast resistance in rice cultivars carrying the R gene Pib , albeit by unknown mechanisms. Thus, this work demonstrates that integrated domain-containing plant NLR receptors can be engineered to confer resistance to pathogens carrying avirulence effectors that trigger plant immunity by unknown mechanisms, thereby providing a practical approach for developing multilines and cultivars with broad race spectrum resistance.