Cloning of the wheat Yr15 resistance gene sheds light on the plant tandem kinase-pseudokinase family.

Authors: Klymiuk, Valentina and Yaniv, Elitsur and Huang, Lin and Raats, Dina and Fatiukha, Andrii and Chen, Shisheng and Feng, Lihua and Frenkel, Zeev and Krugman, Tamar and Lidzbarsky, Gabriel and Chang, Wei and Jääskeläinen, Marko J and Schudoma, Christian and Paulin, Lars and Laine, Pia and Bariana, Harbans and Sela, Hanan and Saleem, Kamran and Sørensen, Chris Khadgi and Hovmøller, Mogens S and Distelfeld, Assaf and Chalhoub, Boulos and Dubcovsky, Jorge and Korol, Abraham B and Schulman, Alan H and Fahima, Tzion

Yellow rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), is a devastating fungal disease threatening much of global wheat production. Race-specific resistance (R)-genes are used to control rust diseases, but the rapid emergence of virulent Pst races has prompted the search for a more durable resistance. Here, we report the cloning of Yr15, a broad-spectrum R-gene derived from wild emmer wheat, which encodes a putative kinase-pseudokinase protein, designated as wheat tandem kinase 1, comprising a unique R-gene structure in wheat. The existence of a similar gene architecture in 92 putative proteins across the plant kingdom, including the barley RPG1 and a candidate for Ug8, suggests that they are members of a distinct family of plant proteins, termed here tandem kinase-pseudokinases (TKPs). The presence of kinase-pseudokinase structure in both plant TKPs and the animal Janus kinases sheds light on the molecular evolution of immune responses across these two kingdoms.

Journal: Nature communications
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06138-9
Year: 2018

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