Two-to-tango – Durable plant disease resistance will require two mutations

Plants suffer significantly from diseases and classical resistance is easily broken. We will re-test the idea that new types of durable resistance can be obtained by removing susceptibility (SUS) genes in the plant, which the pathogen needs in order to cause disease. SUS genes are poorly studied, presumably because plants sense loss of them the same way as they sense pathogens. They therefore activate NLR-receptors to trigger cell death, and when this happens in all cells in a sus mutant, then the plant dies. Meanwhile, plants have a gene, EDS1, needed for NLRs to activate cell death. We will therefore screen for sus mutants by looking for resistant lines, in an eds1 mutant plant that cannot activate cell death. If reintroduction of wild-type EDS1 in such sus mutants, kills the plants, then we have proven the hypothesis. Afterwards, we will find and mutate the particular NLR gene, and we will have a new type of useful resistance in sus/nlr double mutants.