Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan;7(1):60-72.
doi: 10.1038/s41477-020-00826-5. Epub 2021 Jan 4.

Bacterial seed endophyte shapes disease resistance in rice

Haruna Matsumoto  1 , Xiaoyan Fan  1 , Yue Wang  1 , Peter Kusstatscher  2 , Jie Duan  3 , Sanling Wu  4 , Sunlu Chen  5 , Kun Qiao  1 , Yiling Wang  6 , Bin Ma  6 , Guonian Zhu  1 , Yasuyuki Hashidoko  3 , Gabriele Berg  2 , Tomislav Cernava  7 , Mengcen Wang  8
Affiliations

Bacterial seed endophyte shapes disease resistance in rice

Haruna Matsumoto et al. Nat Plants. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

Cereal crop production is severely affected by seed-borne bacterial diseases across the world. Locally occurring disease resistance in various crops remains elusive. Here, we have observed that rice plants of the same cultivar can be differentiated into disease-resistant and susceptible phenotypes under the same pathogen pressure. Following the identification of a seed-endophytic bacterium as the resistance-conferring agent, integration of high-throughput data, gene mutagenesis and molecular interaction assays facilitated the discovery of the underlying mode of action. Sphingomonas melonis that is accumulated and transmitted across generations in disease-resistant rice seeds confers resistance to disease-susceptible phenotypes by producing anthranilic acid. Without affecting cell growth, anthranilic acid interferes with the sigma factor RpoS of the seed-borne pathogen Burkholderia plantarii, probably leading to impairment of upstream cascades that are required for virulence factor biosynthesis. The overall findings highlight the hidden role of seed endophytes in the phytopathology paradigm of 'disease triangles', which encompass the plant, pathogens and environmental conditions. These insights are potentially exploitable for modern crop cultivation threatened by globally widespread bacterial diseases.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Boyd, L. A., Ridout, C., O’Sullivan, D. M., Leach, J. E. & Leung, H. Plant–pathogen interactions: disease resistance in modern agriculture. Trends Genet. 29, 233–240 (2013). - PubMed - DOI
    1. Edwards, J. et al. Structure, variation, and assembly of the root-associated microbiomes of rice. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, E911–E920 (2015). - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. Bebber, D. P., Ramotowski, M. A. T. & Gurr, S. J. Crop pests and pathogens move polewards in a warming world. Nat. Clim. Change 3, 985–988 (2013). - DOI
    1. Ham, J. H., Melanson, R. A. & Rush, M. C. Burkholderia glumae: next major pathogen of rice? Mol. Plant Pathol. 12, 329–339 (2011). - PubMed - DOI
    1. Naughton, L. M. et al. Functional and genomic insights into the pathogenesis of Burkholderia species to rice. Environ. Microbiol. 18, 780–790 (2016). - PubMed - DOI

Supplementary concepts