Engineering heat-stable disease resistance in plants

摘要

Disclosed are nucleic acid molecules which encode heat-stable plant resistance polypeptides having NB-LRR structural motifs, where the polypeptide confers heat-stability to a plant defense response. The invention further involves transgenic plants and transformed host cells that express these nucleic acid molecules and exhibit enhanced disease resistance over a wide range of temperatures.

主权项

1. A method of conferring resistance to a pathogen in a plant or plant component, the method comprising the steps of:
(a) transforming a plant cell with a nucleic acid molecule operably linked to a heterologous promoter that encodes a polypeptide comprising: (i) a nucleotide binding (NB) domain; and (ii) a leucine rich repeat (LRR) domain having EKLD (SEQ ID NO: 3), ERLD (SEQ ID NO: 4), EKVN (SEQ ID NO: 6), EYVD (SEQ ID NO: 7), EKVD (SEQ ID NO: 8), ELXLD (SEQ ID NO: 9), or ELXLVX (SEQ ID NO: 10) sequences, wherein said polypeptide confers a heat-stable defense response to a plant pathogen, wherein said heat-stable defense response is at least 2° C. higher than the temperature at which the plant or plant component fails to meet the defense response in the absence of the polypeptide; and (b) regenerating a plant or plant component from said transformed plant cell, wherein said plant exhibits resistance to said pathogen.