Jin Yun, Zhang Tao, Guo Huishan
State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Sheng Wu Gong Cheng Xue Bao. 2017 Feb 25;33(2):161-169. doi: 10.13345/j.cjb.160403.
Fungal diseases are the main threat to crop yield and quality, often leading to huge economic losses. Chemical fungicides are almost useless to soil-borne and vascular fungal pathogens. The most effective way is crop resistance breeding by using resistance genes. Yet, for plants lacking resistance resources, new approaches are urgently needed for crop protection. Recently, host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) is developed based on the well-known RNA interference, and already effective against viruses and pests. However, it is challenging to validate HIGS in soil-borne fungal pathogens due to uncharacterized and complicated infection processes. Recently, we have made great progresses in revealing the infection structure of Verticillium dahliae, a soil-borne and vascular fungal pathogen that leads to verticillium wilt disease to many crops, including cotton plants. Moreover, we demonstrate that cotton exports endogenous microRNAs to inhibit virulence gene expression in V. dahliae. The most exciting achievement is the successful application of HIGS in cotton plants that confer resistance to V. dahliae. All these results reveal a promising potential for applying HIGS against a wide range of soil-borne fungi.
真菌病害是作物产量和品质的主要威胁，常常导致巨大的经济损失。化学杀菌剂对土传和维管束真菌病原体几乎无效。最有效的方法是利用抗性基因进行作物抗性育种。然而，对于缺乏抗性资源的植物，迫切需要新的作物保护方法。最近，基于著名的RNA干扰技术开发了宿主诱导基因沉默（HIGS），并且已经对病毒和害虫有效。然而，由于土传真菌病原体的感染过程未被充分了解且复杂，在其中验证HIGS具有挑战性。最近，我们在揭示大丽轮枝菌的感染结构方面取得了重大进展，大丽轮枝菌是一种土传和维管束真菌病原体，会导致包括棉花在内的许多作物发生黄萎病。此外，我们证明棉花会输出内源性微小RNA以抑制大丽轮枝菌中致病基因的表达。最令人兴奋的成就是HIGS在赋予棉花对大丽轮枝菌抗性方面的成功应用。所有这些结果揭示了应用HIGS对抗多种土传真菌的广阔前景。
