研究人员将野生植物中的一种基因移植到病害风险大的西红柿和土豆中，结果增加了这些植物抵抗农业病菌的能力。新成果发表在3月在线出版的《自然—生物技术》期刊上，如果这一结果能广泛地复制，那么它将在减少作物大量损失的同时，避免杀虫剂使用所造成的环境、健康和成本问题。
绝大多数植物都拥有对付微生物病菌侵犯的普通和特别两种机制。然而，抵抗特别病菌的能力却因不同种类的植物而异。创建作物抗病毒能力的方法之一是让它们表达出特定的受体，在被某种病害的分子所激发时能作出防御反应。但是，这种抵抗能力却在大范围的田野试验中消失，因为聪明的病菌会突破这道防线，进入植物体内。
Cyril Zipfel和同事将目标集中到一种免疫受体，这是一种来自野生芥菜的模式受体，会被出现在许多致病菌中的一种因子所激活。然而，科学家们却没有在土豆、西红柿等植物家族中发现这种受体。当Zipfel和同事在西红柿和相近的烟草植物中表达出这种基因时，这些植物对来自于四种不同家族的病菌有了更高的抵抗力，这四种病菌分别会导致细菌性萎蔫病、细菌性斑点、冠瘿病等。因为模式识别受体靶标法是病菌生存的关键，所以新方法让细菌难以避开植物的抵抗能力。
未来还需要进一步的田野试验，以检验模式识别受体战略是否能提供比目前方法高两倍的植物抵抗力。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Nature Biotechnology doi:10.1038/nbt.1613
Interfamily transfer of a plant pattern-recognition receptor confers broad-spectrum bacterial resistance
Séverine Lacombe1,5,6, Alejandra Rougon-Cardoso1,5,6, Emma Sherwood1,5,6, Nemo Peeters2, Douglas Dahlbeck3, H Peter van Esse4, Matthew Smoker1, Ghanasyam Rallapalli1, Bart P H J Thomma4, Brian Staskawicz3, Jonathan D G Jones1 & Cyril Zipfel1
Plant diseases cause massive losses in agriculture. Increasing the natural defenses of plants may reduce the impact of phytopathogens on agricultural productivity. Pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs) detect microbes by recognizing conserved pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs)1, 2, 3. Although the overall importance of PAMP-triggered immunity for plant defense is established2, 3, it has not been used to confer disease resistance in crops. We report that activity of a PRR is retained after its transfer between two plant families. Expression of EFR (ref. 4), a PRR from the cruciferous plant Arabidopsis thaliana, confers responsiveness to bacterial elongation factor Tu in the solanaceous plants Nicotiana benthamiana and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), making them more resistant to a range of phytopathogenic bacteria from different genera. Our results in controlled laboratory conditions suggest that heterologous expression of PAMP recognition systems could be used to engineer broad-spectrum disease resistance to important bacterial pathogens, potentially enabling more durable and sustainable resistance in the field.
