Transcription-Aided Selection (TAS) for Crop Disease Resistance: Strategy and Evidence.

Abstract

A transcription-aided selection (TAS) strategy is proposed in this paper, which utilizes the positive regulatory roles of genes involved in the plant immunity pathways to screen crops with high disease resistance. Increased evidence has demonstrated that upon pathogen attack, the expression of diverse genes involved in salicylic acid (SA)-mediated SAR are differentially expressed and transcriptionally regulated. The paper discusses the molecular mechanisms of the SA signaling pathway, which plays a central role in plant immunity, and identifies differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that could be targeted for transcriptional detection. We have conducted a series of experiments to test the TAS strategy and found that the level of GmSAGT1 expression is highly correlated with soybean downy mildew (SDM) resistance with a correlation coefficient R 2 = 0.7981. Using RT-PCR, we screened 2501 soybean germplasms and selected 26 collections with higher levels of both GmSAGT1 and GmPR1 (Pathogenesis-related proteins1) gene expression. Twenty-three out of the twenty-six lines were inoculated with Peronospora manshurica (Pm) in a greenhouse. Eight showed HR (highly resistant), four were R (resistant), five were MR (moderately resistant), three were S (susceptible), and three were HS (highly susceptible). The correlation coefficient R 2 between the TAS result and Pm inoculation results was 0.7035, indicating a satisfactory consistency. The authors anticipate that TAS provides an effective strategy for screening crops with broad-spectrum and long-lasting resistance.

Plant phenotyping relevance

遺伝子発現を用いて作物の病害抵抗性を推定・選抜するTAS戦略を提案し、RT-PCRスクリーニングと接種試験で相関・妥当性を検証している。分子測定だが、抵抗性という植物状態の推定法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The supplied article blocks describe soybean downy mildew phenotyping (qRT-PCR of GmSAGT1/GmPR1 across 2501 germplasms, RNA-seq of two varieties, greenhouse inoculation of 23 lines) but contain no data availability statements, no public phenotype or RNA-seq dataset deposits, no author code or model URLs, and no links.

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.