Rapid cloning of disease-resistance genes in plants using mutagenesis and sequence capture

• Published in: Nature biotechnology 2016-06, Vol.34 (6), p.652-655
• Main Authors: Steuernagel, Burkhard, Periyannan, Sambasivam K, Hernández-Pinzón, Inmaculada, Witek, Kamil, Rouse, Matthew N, Yu, Guotai, Hatta, Asyraf, Ayliffe, Mick, Bariana, Harbans, Jones, Jonathan D G, Lagudah, Evans S, Wulff, Brande B H
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 45/23; 45/70; 631/114/2401; 631/449/2661/2666; 631/449/711; Agriculture; Barley; Bioinformatics; Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; Cloning; Cloning, Molecular - methods; Corn; Crop diseases; Crop yield; Disease control; Disease resistance; Disease Resistance - genetics; Food security; Genes; Genes, Plant - genetics; Genetic engineering; Genetic Enhancement - methods; Hordeum vulgare; letter; Life Sciences; Mutagenesis, Site-Directed - methods; Plant diseases; Plant Diseases - genetics; Plant Diseases - prevention & control; Plant resistance; Plants - genetics; Plants, Genetically Modified - genetics; Rice; Sequence Analysis, DNA - methods; Triticum aestivum; Wheat; Zea mays
• ISSN: 1087-0156; 1546-1696
• DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3543

A method for rapid cloning of plant disease-resistance genes could provide sustainable, genetic solutions to crop pests and pathogens in place of agrichemicals. Wild relatives of domesticated crop species harbor multiple, diverse, disease resistance (R) genes that could be used to engineer sustainable disease control. However, breeding R genes into crop lines often requires long breeding timelines of 5–15 years to break linkage between R genes and deleterious alleles (linkage drag). Further, when R genes are bred one at a time into crop lines, the protection that they confer is often overcome within a few seasons by pathogen evolution 1 . If several cloned R genes were available, it would be possible to pyramid R genes 2 in a crop, which might provide more durable resistance 1 . We describe a three-step method (MutRenSeq)-that combines chemical mutagenesis with exome capture and sequencing for rapid R gene cloning. We applied MutRenSeq to clone stem rust resistance genes Sr22 and Sr45 from hexaploid bread wheat. MutRenSeq can be applied to other commercially relevant crops and their relatives, including, for example, pea, bean, barley, oat, rye, rice and maize.