A designer rice NLR immune receptor confers resistance to the rice blast fungus carrying noncorresponding avirulence effectors

Abstract

Significance In this study, we generated a mutant of the rice nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immunity receptor RGA5 by engineering its heavy metal–associated domain that recognizes the noncorresponding Magnaporthe oryzae Avrs- and ToxB-like effector AvrPib and confers resistance in transgenic rice to the blast fungus isolates with AvrPib, which is known to trigger blast resistance in rice cultivars carrying the R gene Pib , albeit by unknown mechanisms. Thus, this work demonstrates that integrated domain-containing plant NLR receptors can be engineered to confer resistance to pathogens carrying avirulence effectors that trigger plant immunity by unknown mechanisms, thereby providing a practical approach for developing multilines and cultivars with broad race spectrum resistance.