Zhang Dongmei, Wang Yan, Gu Qishen, Liu Lixia, Wang Zhicheng, Zhang Jin, Meng Chengsheng, Yang Jun, Zhang Zixu, Ma Zhiying, Wang Xingfen, Zhang Yan
State Key Laboratory of North China Crop Improvement and Regulation, North China Key Laboratory for Crop Germplasm Resources of Education Ministry, Hebei Provincial Key Laboratory of Crop Germplasm Resources, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding, China.
Mol Plant Pathol. 2025 Jan;26(1):e70052. doi: 10.1111/mpp.70052.
Cotton Verticillium wilt (VW) is often a destructive disease that results in significant fibre yield and quality losses in Gossypium hirsutum. Transferring the resistance trait of Gossypium barbadense to G. hirsutum is optional but challenging in traditional breeding due to limited molecular dissections of resistance genes. Here, we discovered a species-diversified structural variation (SV) in the promoter of receptor-like protein 6 (RLP6) that caused distinctly higher expression level of RLP6 in G. barbadense with the SV than G. hirsutum without the SV. Functional experiments showed that RLP6 is an important regulator in mediating VW resistance. Overexpressing RLP6 significantly enhanced resistance and root growth, whereas the opposite phenotype appeared in RLP6-silenced cotton. A series of experiments indicated that RLP6 regulated reactive oxygen species (ROS) and salicylic acid (SA) signalling, which induced diversified defence-related gene expression with pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins and cell wall proteins enrichments for resistance improvement. These findings could be valuable for the transfer of the G. barbadense SV locus to improve G. hirsutum VW resistance in future crop disease resistance breeding.
棉花黄萎病通常是一种毁灭性病害，会导致陆地棉的纤维产量和品质大幅下降。将海岛棉的抗性性状转移到陆地棉是可行的，但在传统育种中具有挑战性，因为对抗性基因的分子解析有限。在此，我们在类受体蛋白6（RLP6）启动子中发现了一种物种多样化的结构变异（SV），该变异导致具有该SV的海岛棉中RLP6的表达水平明显高于没有该SV的陆地棉。功能实验表明，RLP6是介导黄萎病抗性的重要调节因子。过表达RLP6显著增强了抗性和根系生长，而在RLP6沉默的棉花中则出现相反的表型。一系列实验表明，RLP6调节活性氧（ROS）和水杨酸（SA）信号传导，诱导多种防御相关基因表达，其中病程相关（PR）蛋白和细胞壁蛋白富集以提高抗性。这些发现对于在未来作物抗病育种中转移海岛棉SV位点以提高陆地棉对黄萎病的抗性可能具有重要价值。
