Wheat is a target for plenty of fungal diseases. Wang and colleagues Studied special plant proteins called CERK1 that help plants detect fungi. The team compared CERK1 proteins from wheat and the model plant Arabidopsis, and found that the Arabidopsis version triggered a stronger immune response than wheat’s own CERK1. They then found that adding either Arabidopsis or extra wheat CERK1 genes improved wheats resistance to multiple fungal diseases.
CERK1 is an alarm that recognises chitin, something that fungi use for their cell walls, that doesn’t appear in plants. CERK1 sits on the outside of a plant cell and, when it comes into contact with chitin, it binds with it. This triggers a cascade of immune responses inside the plant cell to help fight infection. It’s found in many plants, and the better it works, the better a plant can fight off infection.
Wang and colleagues compared TaCERK1, the gene that makes CERK1 in wheat, and AtCERK1, the gene that makes CERK1 in Arabidopsis by adding copies of the gene to a wheat variety susceptible to disease. They found that AtCERK1 triggered a much stronger immune response, even when plants were given more copies of TaCERK1.
Fungal diseases are a major threat to wheat production worldwide. This research shows what genes help wheat fight diseases such as Fusarium head blight, stripe rust, leaf rust, stem rust, and powdery mildew. Improving CERK1 response promises to be a method to tackle multiple problem fungi.
Wang, L., He, Y., Guo, G., Xia, X., Dong, Y., Zhang, Y., Wang, Y., Fan, X., Wu, L., Zhou, X. and Zhang, Z., 2023. Overexpression of plant chitin receptors in wheat confers broad-spectrum resistance to fungal diseases. The Plant Journal, https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.17035 ($)
