Expanding the recognition specificity of NB-LRR proteins to confer disease resistance to the Soybean Mosaic Virus
M. HELM (1), R. Innes (1) (1) Indiana University, U.S.A.

Genetically determined disease resistance is one of the most effective and environmentally sustainable approaches to protecting crops from disease. Although significant progress has been made with respect to understanding the mechanistic basis of plant-pathogen interactions, a remaining challenge is to expand the recognition specificity of endogenous plant resistance (R) proteins to confer entirely new specificities. We recently reported a novel approach for changing the recognition specificity of an endogenous Arabidopsis R protein by creating ‘decoy’ effector targets that function as substrates for pathogen proteases. This strategy is based on our observation that swapping the proteolytic cleavage site in a protease-targeted host protein from Arabidopsis, PBS1, expands the specificity of the host immune response pathway, thereby conferring resistance to new pathogens. We are now attempting to use this strategy developed in Arabidopsis to engineer durable resistance in soybean (Glycine max) to the Soybean Mosaic Virus (SMV) based on the recognition of the SMV protease, NIa. To date, we have identified three PBS1 orthologs from soybean and have modified each ortholog such that they will be cleaved by the SMV NIa protease. Future work will involve transiently co-expressing the modified soybean PBS1 derivatives with the SMV NIa protease in soybean to test if NIa-mediated cleavage of the modified soybean PBS1 orthologs triggers activation of the cognate soybean R protein. 

Abstract Number: P20-720
Session Type: Poster