Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA.
Institute of Cereal and Oil Crops, Hebei Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Shijiazhuang, China.
Nat Genet. 2019 Jul;51(7):1099-1105. doi: 10.1038/s41588-019-0425-8. Epub 2019 Jun 10.
Fusarium head blight (FHB), which is mainly caused by Fusarium graminearum, is a destructive wheat disease that threatens global wheat production. Fhb1, a quantitative trait locus discovered in Chinese germplasm, provides the most stable and the largest effect on FHB resistance in wheat. Here we show that TaHRC, a gene that encodes a putative histidine-rich calcium-binding protein, is the key determinant of Fhb1-mediated resistance to FHB. We demonstrate that TaHRC encodes a nuclear protein conferring FHB susceptibility and that a deletion spanning the start codon of this gene results in FHB resistance. Identical sequences of the TaHRC-R allele in diverse accessions indicate that Fhb1 had a single origin, and phylogenetic and haplotype analyses suggest that the TaHRC-R allele most likely originated from a line carrying the Dahongpao haplotype. This discovery opens a new avenue to improve FHB resistance in wheat, and possibly in other cereal crops, by manipulating TaHRC sequence through bioengineering approaches.
镰刀菌穗腐病（FHB）主要由禾谷镰刀菌引起，是一种破坏性的小麦病害，威胁着全球小麦生产。在中国种质中发现的 Fhb1 数量性状位点为小麦提供了对 FHB 抗性最稳定和最大的影响。在这里，我们表明 TaHRC，一个编码假定的富含组氨酸的钙结合蛋白的基因，是 Fhb1 介导的 FHB 抗性的关键决定因素。我们证明 TaHRC 编码一种赋予 FHB 易感性的核蛋白，并且跨越该基因起始密码子的缺失导致 FHB 抗性。不同品系中 TaHRC-R 等位基因的相同序列表明 Fhb1 具有单一的起源，系统发育和单倍型分析表明 TaHRC-R 等位基因最有可能源自携带 Dahongpao 单倍型的品系。这一发现为通过生物工程方法通过操纵 TaHRC 序列来提高小麦，甚至可能是其他谷类作物的 FHB 抗性开辟了新途径。
