Location: Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research
2021 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. Novel disease resistance in barley. Fungal pathogens are among the greatest threats to cereal grain production worldwide. ARS scientists in Ames, Iowa, and funded by the National Science Foundation-Plant Genome Research Program, used genomic methods to identify a novel variant of SGT1, a protein vital for all life, in barley. This variant contains a unique mutation in the structural region that helps to stabilize other disease resistance proteins. In nature, mutations to SGT1 are usually lethal, but this research deomnstrates for the first time a unique modificaiton that delineates the requirement for some disease resistances, while unaffecting others as well as normal cell processes. This discovery can be used to predict regions by which pathogen effectors and host proteins interact with SGT1, facilitating precise editing of effector imcompatible, disease resistance crops. LOG NO. 377317.
2. Maize silk expression atlas. Each year, growers across the globe collectively produce approximately one million corn kernels per human on the planet. These corn kernels are produced through cross-pollination, which occurs when pollen from the male parent comes in contact with the silks from the female parent. Yet the biological complexities of silk form and function are not yet well understood. ARS scientists in Ames, Iowa, and collaborators at Iowa State University developed a comprehensive catalgue of how genes are turned on and off in corn silks. This "corn expression atlas" provides the data to understand how silks function in diverse environments utilized in maize production. This research demonstrates for the first time the wide diversity of genes expressed during maize silk growth and function, including important roles in development, metabolism, physiology and abiotic- and biotic-defense. These results are expected to be widely used in agricultural research focusing on both stress response and plant reproductive biology. LOG NO. 365258.
Review Publications
Chapman, A.V., Hunt, M., Surana, P., Velasquez-Zapata, V., Xu, W., Fuerst, G.S., Wise, R.P. 2020. Disruption of barley immunity to powdery mildew by an in-frame Lys-Leu deletion in the essential protein SGT1. Genetics. 217(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyaa026.
Banerjee, S., Velasquez-Zapata, V., Fuerst, G.S., Elmore, J.M., Wise, R.P. 2020. NGPINT: a next-generation protein-protein interaction software. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 22(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbaa351.
Velasquez-Zapata, V., Elmore, M.J., Banerjee, S., Dorman, K., Wise, R.P. 2021. Next-generation yeast-two-hybrid analysis with Y2H-SCORES identifies novel interactors of the MLA immune receptor. PLoS Computational Biology. 17(4). Article e1008890. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008890.
Banerjee, S., Bhandary, P., Woodhouse, M.H., Sen, T.Z., Wise, R.P., Andorf, C.M. 2021. FINDER: an automated software package to annotate eukaryotic genes from RNA-Seq data and associated protein sequences. BMC Bioinformatics. 22. Article 205. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-021-04120-9.
McNinch, C., Chen, K., Dennison, T.S., Lopez, M.D., Yandeau-Nelson, M.D., Lauter, N.C. 2020. A multigenotype maize silk expression atlas reveals how exposure-related stresses are mitigated following emergence from husk leaves. The Plant Genome. 13(3). Article e20040. https://doi.org/10.1002/tpg2.20040.