Wheat Pm4 resistance to powdery mildew is controlled by alternative splice variants encoding chimeric proteins

Sánchez-Martín, Javier; Widrig, Victoria; Herren, Gerhard; Wicker, Thomas; Zbinden, Helen; Gronnier, Julien; Spörri, Laurin; Praz, Coraline R; Heuberger, Matthias; Kolodziej, Markus C; Isaksson, Jonatan; Steuernagel, Burkhard; Karafiátová, Miroslava; Doležel, Jaroslav; Zipfel, Cyril; Keller, Beat

doi:10.5167/uzh-201746

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Sánchez-Martín, J., Widrig, V., Herren, G., Wicker, T., Zbinden, H., Gronnier, J., Spörri, L., Praz, C. R., Heuberger, M., Kolodziej, M. C., Isaksson, J., Steuernagel, B., Karafiátová, M., Doležel, J., Zipfel, C., & Keller, B. (2021). Wheat Pm4 resistance to powdery mildew is controlled by alternative splice variants encoding chimeric proteins. Nature Plants, 7(3), 327–341. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00869-2

Abstract

Crop breeding for resistance to pathogens largely relies on genes encoding receptors that confer race-specific immunity. Here, we report the identification of the wheat Pm4 race-specific resistance gene to powdery mildew. Pm4 encodes a putative chimeric protein of a serine/threonine kinase and multiple C2 domains and transmembrane regions, a unique domain architecture among known resistance proteins. Pm4 undergoes constitutive alternative splicing, generating two isoforms with different protein domain topologies that are both essentia