A study of transcriptome in leaf rust infected bread wheat involving seedling resistance gene Lr28

Abstract

Leaf rust disease causes severe yield losses in wheat throughout the world. During the present study, high-throughput RNA-Seq analysis was used to gain insights into the role of Lr28 gene in imparting seedling leaf rust resistance in wheat. Differential expression analysis was conducted using a pair of near-isogenic lines (NILs) (HD 2329 and HD 2329 + Lr28) at early (0 h before inoculation (hbi), 24 and 48 h after inoculation (hai)) and late stages (72, 96 and 168 hai) after inoculation with a virulent pathotype of pathogen Puccinia triticina. Expression of a large number of genes was found to be affected due to the presence/absence of Lr28. Gene ontology analysis of the differentially expressed transcripts suggested enrichment of transcripts involved in carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism, oxidative stress and hormone metabolism, in resistant and/or susceptible NILs. Genes encoding receptor like kinases (RLKs) (including ATP binding; serine threonine kinases) and other kinases were the most abundant class of genes, whose expression was affected. Genes involved in reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis and several genes encoding transcription factors (TFs) (most abundant being WRKY TFs) were also identified along with some ncRNAs and histone variants. Quantitative real-time PCR was also used for validation of 39 representative selected genes. In the long term, the present study should prove useful in developing leaf rust resistant wheat cultivars through molecular breeding.

QTL mapping of adult plant and seedling resistance to leaf rust (Puccinia triticina Eriks.) in a multiparent advanced generation intercross (MAGIC) wheat population

“…sugar efflux transporters, DnaJ domain belonging to heat shock protein family (Bekh-Ochir et al 2013), a protein kinase domain, a NB-ARC domain and a cation/calcium exchanger. Such genes show an increased expression during defense reactions in wheat-leaf rust (Sharma et al 2018) and wheat-stripe rust interactions (Wang et al 2020) and as response to environmental stresses.…”

Pathogen-induced alterations in methylome during Lr48-mediated APR in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) 

“…A number of expression studies for wheat-rust pathosystem in the past suggested that the host rapidly and precisely re-program a large number of downstream signalling and defense genes for providing partial durable resistance against a broad range of fungal pathogens ,9,10,11,12,13 . This reprogramming may also involve epigenetic modi cations as shown in our own studies involving epigenetic modi cations (methylation, chromatin modi cation and ncRNA) of some downstream defense genes involved in leaf rust resistance mediated by race-speci c gene Lr28 and APR gene Lr48 12,13,14,15,16 . Among epigenetic modi cations, DNA methylation has received maximum attention, and has been shown to be involved in regulation of expression of genes involved in a variety of cellular processes, which control development and stress responses 18 .…”

TaRPP13‐3, a CC‐NBS‐LRR‐like gene located on chr 7D, promotes disease resistance to wheat powdery mildew in Brock

“…RNA‐Seq has been widely used to deeply explore DEGs among the plants with different phenotypes (Hao et al., 2016; Powell et al., 2017; Sharma et al., 2018). In this study, the susceptible wheat, ‘Jing411’, and disease‐resistant NIL, ‘BJ‐1’, were cultured until the first leaf was fully unfolded.…”