A wheat kinase and immune receptor form host-specificity barriers against the blast fungus
Sanu Arora, Andrew Steed, Rachel Goddard, Kumar Gaurav, Tom O’Hara, Adam Schoen, Nidhi Rawat, Ahmed F. Elkot, Andrey Korolev, Catherine Chinoy, Martha H. Nicholson, Soichiro Asuke, Rea L. Antoniou-Kourounioti, Burkhard Steuernagel, Guotai Yu, Rajani Awal, Macarena Forner-Martínez, Luzie U. Wingen, Erin Baggs, J. H. Clarke, Diane G. O. Saunders, Ksenia V. Krasileva, Yukio Tosa, Jonathan D. G. Jones, Vijay Tiwari, Brande B. H. Wulff, P. Nicholson
Abstract
Since emerging in Brazil in 1985, wheat blast has spread throughout South America and recently appeared in Bangladesh and Zambia. Here we show that two wheat resistance genes, Rwt3 and Rwt4, acting as host-specificity barriers against non-Triticum blast pathotypes encode a nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat immune receptor and a tandem kinase, respectively. Molecular isolation of these genes will enable study of the molecular interaction between pathogen effector and host resistance genes.