Scientists discover gene for resistance to Ug99 of pathogen showed that changes in the The world's food supply should be a little more plen- virulence of existing pathogen races can become a tiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough, according to huge problem." excited university wheat researchers. As a first line of defense, wheat breeders and re- Eduard Akhunov, associate professor of plant pa- searchers began looking for resistance genes among thology at State University, and his colleague, those that had already been discovered in the ex- Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California- isting germplasm repositories, he said. Davis, led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the "The Sr35 gene was one of those genes that was dis- most deadly races of the wheat stem pathogen covered in grown in Turkey," Ug99. This rust was first discovered in in Akhunov said. "Until now, however, we did not 1999. know what kind of gene confers resistance to Ug99 in this wheat accession." The discovery may help scientists develop new wheat varieties and strategies that protect the To identify the resistance gene Sr35, the team world's food crops against the wheat stem rust path- turned to einkorn wheat that is known to be re- ogen that is spreading from to the breadbas- sistant to the Ug99 fungal strain. Einkorn wheat has kets of and can cause significant crop losses. limited economic value and is cultivated in small are- as of the Mediterranean region. It has been replaced Other Kansas State University researchers include by higher yielding pasta and bread wheat varieties. Harold Trick, professor of ; Andres Salcedo, doctoral candidate in genetics from Mexico; Researchers spent nearly four years trying to identify and Cyrille Saintenac, a postdoctoral research associ- the location of the Sr35 gene in the wheat genome, ate currently working at the Institut National de la which contains nearly two times more genetic infor- Recherche Agronomique in . The project was mation than the human genome. funded by the U.S. Department of and Borlaug Global Rust Initiative. Once the researchers narrowed the list of candidate genes, they used two complimentary approaches to The team's study, "Identification of Wheat Gene find the Sr35 gene. First, they chemically mutagen- Sr35 that Confers Resistance to Ug99 Stem Rust ized the resistant accession of wheat to identify Race Group," appears in the journal Science. plants that become susceptible to the stem rust pathogen. It identifies the stem rust resistance gene named Sr35, and appears alongside a study from an Austral- "It was a matter of knocking out each candidate ian group that identifies another effective resistance gene until we found the one that made a plant sus- gene called Sr33. ceptible," Akhunov said. "It was a tedious process and took a lot of time, but it was worth the effort." "This gene, Sr35, functions as a key component of plants' immune system," Akhunov said. "It recogniz- Next, researchers isolated the candidate gene and es the invading pathogen and triggers a response in used biotechnical approaches to develop transgenic the plant to fight the disease." plants that carried the Sr35 gene and showed re- sistance to the Ug99 race of stem rust. Wheat stem rust is caused by a fungal pathogen. According to Akhunov, since the 1950s wheat breed- Now that the resistance gene has been found, ers have been able to develop wheat varieties that Akhunov and colleagues are looking at what proteins are largely resistant to this pathogen. However, the are transferred by the into the wheat plants emergence of strain Ug99 in Uganda in 1999 devas- and recognized by the protein encoded by the Sr35 tated crops and has spread to , , Su- gene. This will help researchers to better understand dan and , though has yet to reach the U.S. the molecular mechanisms behind infection and de- velop new approaches for controlling this devas- "Until that point, wheat breeders had two or three tating pathogen. genes that were so efficient against stem rust for decades that this disease wasn't the biggest con- cern," Akhunov said. "However, the discovery of the