Rice false smut, caused by Ustilaginoidea virens, increases the proportion of unfilled grains and reduces pollen viability in infected rice panicles. Although the fungus adopts a flower-specific infection strategy that interferes with fertilization, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here we show that U. virens manipulates rice floret development and immune responses during early infection by targeting host lipid signalling. We identified secreted in xylem protein 1 (Sxp1) as a secreted apoplastic effector induced under nutrient-rich conditions and during early infection. Ectopic expression of Sxp1 in rice causes near-complete spikelet sterility and markedly reduced pollen viability. Sxp1 is a key virulence factor and interacts with the lipid transfer protein LTPL113, which binds phosphatidic acid and phosphatidylserine, and is essential for pollen development and lipid-potentiated immune outputs. Sxp1 disrupts the association between LTPL113 and lipids, thereby compromising lipid-mediated immunity and floret development. Together, our findings reveal a mechanism by which U. virens hijacks lipid signalling to manipulate floret development and suppress immunity.
{"title":"Rice false smut fungus hijacks rice lipid signalling to manipulate floret development and immunity","authors":"Yuandi Xu, Juan Jin, Yuhe Zhang, Xin Wang, Fan Yang, Shuang Wu, Yixin Gao, Jing-Ni Wu, Yiming Wang, Meixiang Zhang, Xinyu Liu, Muxing Liu, Leiyun Yang, Gang Li, Zhengguang Zhang, Haifeng Zhang","doi":"10.1038/s41477-026-02260-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02260-5","url":null,"abstract":"Rice false smut, caused by Ustilaginoidea virens, increases the proportion of unfilled grains and reduces pollen viability in infected rice panicles. Although the fungus adopts a flower-specific infection strategy that interferes with fertilization, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here we show that U. virens manipulates rice floret development and immune responses during early infection by targeting host lipid signalling. We identified secreted in xylem protein 1 (Sxp1) as a secreted apoplastic effector induced under nutrient-rich conditions and during early infection. Ectopic expression of Sxp1 in rice causes near-complete spikelet sterility and markedly reduced pollen viability. Sxp1 is a key virulence factor and interacts with the lipid transfer protein LTPL113, which binds phosphatidic acid and phosphatidylserine, and is essential for pollen development and lipid-potentiated immune outputs. Sxp1 disrupts the association between LTPL113 and lipids, thereby compromising lipid-mediated immunity and floret development. Together, our findings reveal a mechanism by which U. virens hijacks lipid signalling to manipulate floret development and suppress immunity.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147496835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Global warming poses a substantial threat to crop productivity, yet the genetic basis of thermotolerance in wheat remains poorly understood. Here we cloned a heat stress tolerance (HST) gene, TaHST2, and revealed that it underwent functional silencing during wheat domestication. As a negative regulator of basal HST, TaHST2 was progressively suppressed through intronic sequence polymorphisms and epigenetic modifications, which might be an evolutionary consequence of hexaploidization. Haplotype analysis suggests strong artificial selection against TaHST2 expression, favouring improved thermotolerance in cultivated wheat. Further studies demonstrated that TaHST2 encodes a ubiquitin hydrolase that stabilizes HST repression proteins TaHSC701 and TaHSC702, thereby modulating heat response pathways. Our findings uncover a potential key genetic event in wheat evolution and offer new strategies for utilizing synthetic hexaploidy and octoploid wheat to breed heat-resilient varieties.
{"title":"TaHST2 silencing shapes basal heat tolerance in allohexaploid wheat.","authors":"Runqi Zhang,Guoyu Liu,Shanshan Zhai,Xinhao Meng,Jiazheng Yu,Yuqi Zhang,Shidian Wen,Xinghua Luo,Wenxuan Han,Hongyao Lou,Tianjiao Shao,Rongqi Liang,Jun Ma,Huijie Zhai,Mingshan You,Chaojie Xie,Yufeng Zhang,Jie Liu,Zhaorong Hu,Weilong Guo,Qixin Sun,Jiewen Xing,Zhongfu Ni,Baoyun Li","doi":"10.1038/s41477-026-02257-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02257-0","url":null,"abstract":"Global warming poses a substantial threat to crop productivity, yet the genetic basis of thermotolerance in wheat remains poorly understood. Here we cloned a heat stress tolerance (HST) gene, TaHST2, and revealed that it underwent functional silencing during wheat domestication. As a negative regulator of basal HST, TaHST2 was progressively suppressed through intronic sequence polymorphisms and epigenetic modifications, which might be an evolutionary consequence of hexaploidization. Haplotype analysis suggests strong artificial selection against TaHST2 expression, favouring improved thermotolerance in cultivated wheat. Further studies demonstrated that TaHST2 encodes a ubiquitin hydrolase that stabilizes HST repression proteins TaHSC701 and TaHSC702, thereby modulating heat response pathways. Our findings uncover a potential key genetic event in wheat evolution and offer new strategies for utilizing synthetic hexaploidy and octoploid wheat to breed heat-resilient varieties.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147490059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-03-19DOI: 10.1038/s41477-026-02241-8
{"title":"Dual transcriptional control by ZmMYB127 regulates grain yield and quality.","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41477-026-02241-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02241-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147483658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-03-19DOI: 10.1038/s41477-026-02254-3
Joseph Swift,Xuelin Wu,Jiaying Xu,Carl Procko,Tanvi Jain,Natanella Illouz-Eliaz,Joseph R Nery,Joanne Chory,Joseph R Ecker
Leaf development is dynamic, enabling plants to modulate their growth in response to environmental cues. Under drought conditions, for instance, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana restricts leaf growth to conserve water, a strategy that enhances water-use efficiency. While this 'stress avoidance' response is well described physiologically, the underlying transcriptional changes that drive such developmental plasticity remain poorly understood. We investigated the transcriptional basis of how drought stress reshapes Arabidopsis leaf development. We profiled 1,226 leaves at various developmental stages and levels of drought stress, and generated a single-nucleus transcriptome atlas comprising ~1 million individual nuclei. We found that drought stress advances transcriptional programmes associated with leaf ageing in a dose-dependent manner, particularly within the mesophyll. These transcriptional shifts scale with stress intensity and correlate with reduced shoot growth, indicating that mesophyll-specific transcriptional changes underlie drought-induced restriction in leaf growth. Overexpression of FERRIC REDUCTION OXIDASE 6 (FRO6) in the mesophyll was sufficient to partially restore leaf growth under drought conditions. Our findings demonstrate how gene expression is reshaped by environmental cues to ensure that shoot architecture is adaptive to stress severity.
{"title":"Stress drives plasticity in leaf ageing transcriptional dynamics in Arabidopsis thaliana.","authors":"Joseph Swift,Xuelin Wu,Jiaying Xu,Carl Procko,Tanvi Jain,Natanella Illouz-Eliaz,Joseph R Nery,Joanne Chory,Joseph R Ecker","doi":"10.1038/s41477-026-02254-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02254-3","url":null,"abstract":"Leaf development is dynamic, enabling plants to modulate their growth in response to environmental cues. Under drought conditions, for instance, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana restricts leaf growth to conserve water, a strategy that enhances water-use efficiency. While this 'stress avoidance' response is well described physiologically, the underlying transcriptional changes that drive such developmental plasticity remain poorly understood. We investigated the transcriptional basis of how drought stress reshapes Arabidopsis leaf development. We profiled 1,226 leaves at various developmental stages and levels of drought stress, and generated a single-nucleus transcriptome atlas comprising ~1 million individual nuclei. We found that drought stress advances transcriptional programmes associated with leaf ageing in a dose-dependent manner, particularly within the mesophyll. These transcriptional shifts scale with stress intensity and correlate with reduced shoot growth, indicating that mesophyll-specific transcriptional changes underlie drought-induced restriction in leaf growth. Overexpression of FERRIC REDUCTION OXIDASE 6 (FRO6) in the mesophyll was sufficient to partially restore leaf growth under drought conditions. Our findings demonstrate how gene expression is reshaped by environmental cues to ensure that shoot architecture is adaptive to stress severity.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147483653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the main nutrient reservoir in cereal grains, the endosperm largely determines grain yield, performance and nutrition. However, knowledge of genes that coordinate endosperm filling and nutrient deposition, which could offer potential for genetic improvement of grain traits, remain limited. Here we identified ZmMYB127, a filling-endosperm-specific MYB transcription factor. Its knockout disrupted filling-stage aleurone layer morphology and nutrient accumulation, leading to reduced kernel weight, quality and nutrition. ZmMYB127 exerts dual transcriptional control over core endosperm-filling genes, including naked endosperm-1/2 (NKD1/2), crinkly4 (CR4) and opaque2 (O2). ZmMYB127 forms an activation complex with O2 to synergistically induce NKD1/2 expression by binding to two distinct cis-regulatory elements (CREs). Conversely, the co-repressor ZmLUG3 bridges ZmMYB127 and ZmABI4, a B3-domain transcription factor, to form a repressive complex that suppresses O2 and CR4 via another CRE pair. Filling-endosperm-specific overexpression of ZmMYB127 enhanced kernel weight, quality and nutrition. Introducing this overexpression into the elite cultivar Zhengdan958 confirmed its breeding potential. Furthermore, its rice homologue OsMYB20 also plays a conserved role in endosperm filling. Our findings establish ZmMYB127 as a promising target for grain improvement without trade-offs for precision breeding.
{"title":"ZmMYB127 controls maize endosperm filling via dual-transcriptional regulation to improve grain yield and quality.","authors":"Jian Shi,Zhiqiang Li,Zeyu Wang,Shuxing Pan,Xu Wu,Xi Wang,Yafeng Ye,Zhuoping Xu,Junjun He,Zhiyong Zhang","doi":"10.1038/s41477-026-02238-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02238-3","url":null,"abstract":"As the main nutrient reservoir in cereal grains, the endosperm largely determines grain yield, performance and nutrition. However, knowledge of genes that coordinate endosperm filling and nutrient deposition, which could offer potential for genetic improvement of grain traits, remain limited. Here we identified ZmMYB127, a filling-endosperm-specific MYB transcription factor. Its knockout disrupted filling-stage aleurone layer morphology and nutrient accumulation, leading to reduced kernel weight, quality and nutrition. ZmMYB127 exerts dual transcriptional control over core endosperm-filling genes, including naked endosperm-1/2 (NKD1/2), crinkly4 (CR4) and opaque2 (O2). ZmMYB127 forms an activation complex with O2 to synergistically induce NKD1/2 expression by binding to two distinct cis-regulatory elements (CREs). Conversely, the co-repressor ZmLUG3 bridges ZmMYB127 and ZmABI4, a B3-domain transcription factor, to form a repressive complex that suppresses O2 and CR4 via another CRE pair. Filling-endosperm-specific overexpression of ZmMYB127 enhanced kernel weight, quality and nutrition. Introducing this overexpression into the elite cultivar Zhengdan958 confirmed its breeding potential. Furthermore, its rice homologue OsMYB20 also plays a conserved role in endosperm filling. Our findings establish ZmMYB127 as a promising target for grain improvement without trade-offs for precision breeding.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147483654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：