Two Tomato (S) Thaumatin-Like Protein Genes Confer Enhanced Resistance to Late Blight ().

Late blight (caused by ) poses a serious threat to tomato production but the number of late blight resistance genes isolated from tomato is limited, making resistance gene mining a high research priority. In this study, highly resistant CLN2037E and susceptible No. 5 tomato inbred lines were used to identify late blight resistance genes. Using transcriptome sequencing, we discovered 36 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 21 nucleotide binding site-leucine-rich repeat and 15 pathogenesis-related (PR) disease resistance genes. Cluster analysis and real-time quantitative PCR showed that these 36 genes possessed similar expression patterns in different inbred lines after inoculation with . Moreover, two genes with unique responses were chosen to verify their functions when exposed to : and , both of which were thaumatin-like protein genes and were clustered in the tomato genome. Functions of these two genes were identified by gene overexpression and gene editing technology. Overexpression and knockout of single and corresponded to an increase and decrease in resistance to late blight, respectively, and led to a greater change in disease resistance compared with . Cotransformation of dual genes resulted in a much greater effect than any single gene. This study provides novel candidate resistance genes for tomato breeding against late blight and insights into the interaction mechanisms between tomato and .