1. Selection of a subspecies-specific diterpene gene cluster implicated in rice disease resistance
- Author
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Meng Yuan, Morifumi Hasegawa, Tomasz Czechowski, Meng Peng, Xitong Zhu, Ling-Ling Chen, Jie Luo, Zixin Liu, Lianghuan Qu, Yuheng Shi, Zixuan Wang, Yangyang Sun, Xuyang Wang, Ling Liu, Zixin Yang, Long Lei, Shen Zhou, Takayuki Tohge, Shuangqian Shen, Chuansong Zhan, Alisdair R. Fernie, Meng Zhang, Ian A. Graham, Xinyu Jing, Hao Guo, Yi Li, Xianqing Liu, Chenkun Yang, Jiawen Shao, Yufei Li, Kang Li, and Feng Zhang
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,0301 basic medicine ,Crops, Agricultural ,China ,Plant Science ,Plant disease resistance ,Oryza ,01 natural sciences ,03 medical and health sciences ,Gene Expression Regulation, Plant ,Gene cluster ,Secondary metabolism ,Gene ,Disease Resistance ,Genetics ,chemistry.chemical_classification ,Regulation of gene expression ,biology ,Phytoalexin ,food and beverages ,biology.organism_classification ,Oryza rufipogon ,030104 developmental biology ,chemistry ,Multigene Family ,Diterpenes ,010606 plant biology & botany - Abstract
Diterpenoids are the major group of antimicrobial phytoalexins in rice1,2. Here, we report the discovery of a rice diterpenoid gene cluster on chromosome 7 (DGC7) encoding the entire biosynthetic pathway to 5,10-diketo-casbene, a member of the monocyclic casbene-derived diterpenoids. We revealed that DGC7 is regulated directly by JMJ705 through methyl jasmonate-mediated epigenetic control3. Functional characterization of pathway genes revealed OsCYP71Z21 to encode a casbene C10 oxidase, sought after for the biosynthesis of an array of medicinally important diterpenoids. We further show that DGC7 arose relatively recently in the Oryza genus, and that it was partly formed in Oryza rufipogon and positively selected for in japonica during domestication. Casbene-synthesizing enzymes that are functionally equivalent to OsTPS28 are present in several species of Euphorbiaceae but gene tree analysis shows that these and other casbene-modifying enzymes have evolved independently. As such, combining casbene-modifying enzymes from these different families of plants may prove effective in producing a diverse array of bioactive diterpenoid natural products. A rice diterpenoid gene cluster is reported that controls the biosynthesis of 5,10-diketo-casbene, a phytoalexin that confers resistance to rice bacterial blight and blast fungus. It recently evolved in the japonica subspecies under artificial selection.
- Published
- 2020