Cloning of the wheat Yr15 resistance gene sheds light on the plant tandem kinase-pseudokinase family

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 3735 - 12
• Main Authors: Klymiuk, Valentina, Yaniv, Elitsur, Huang, Lin, Raats, Dina, Fatiukha, Andrii, Chen, Shisheng, Feng, Lihua, Frenkel, Zeev, Krugman, Tamar, Lidzbarsky, Gabriel, Chang, Wei, Jääskeläinen, Marko J., Schudoma, Christian, Paulin, Lars, Laine, Pia, Bariana, Harbans, Sela, Hanan, Saleem, Kamran, Sørensen, Chris Khadgi, Hovmøller, Mogens S., Distelfeld, Assaf, Chalhoub, Boulos, Dubcovsky, Jorge, Korol, Abraham B., Schulman, Alan H., Fahima, Tzion
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 03-10-2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 14; 14/19; 14/34; 14/35; 14/63; 38; 38/44; 38/91; 45; 45/22; 45/23; 45/29; 45/41; 45/70; 45/77; 45/88; 45/90; 631/208/182; 631/449/2661/2666; 631/449/711; Agricultural production; Animals; Barley; Basidiomycota - pathogenicity; Chromosome Mapping; Cloning; Disease Resistance - genetics; Evolution, Molecular; Fungal diseases; Genes, Plant - physiology; Hordeum - genetics; Humanities and Social Sciences; Immune response; Janus Kinases - genetics; Kinases; Molecular evolution; multidisciplinary; Mutagenesis; Plant Diseases - immunology; Plant Diseases - microbiology; Plant Proteins - genetics; Plants, Genetically Modified; Protein Domains - genetics; Protein Domains - physiology; Proteins; Puccinia striiformis; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Stripe rust; Triticum - microbiology; Triticum - physiology; Wheat
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06138-9

Yellow rust, caused by
Puccinia striiformis
f. sp.
tritici
(
Pst
), is a devastating fungal disease threatening much of global wheat production. Race-specific resistance (
R
)-genes are used to control rust diseases, but the rapid emergence of virulent
Pst
races has prompted the search for a more durable resistance. Here, we report the cloning of
Yr15
, a broad-spectrum
R
-gene derived from wild emmer wheat, which encodes a putative kinase-pseudokinase protein, designated as wheat tandem kinase 1, comprising a unique
R
-gene structure in wheat. The existence of a similar gene architecture in 92 putative proteins across the plant kingdom, including the barley RPG1 and a candidate for
Ug8
, suggests that they are members of a distinct family of plant proteins, termed here tandem kinase-pseudokinases (TKPs). The presence of kinase-pseudokinase structure in both plant TKPs and the animal Janus kinases sheds light on the molecular evolution of immune responses across these two kingdoms.
Yellow rust fungus severely limits global wheat production and breeding of durable resistance is challenging. Here Klymiuk et al. isolate the broad-spectrum
Yr15
resistance gene from wild emmer wheat and show that it is a member of a distinct tandem kinase-pseudokinase family of plant proteins.