Principal Investigator: Tao Xiaorong 

Funding Received: 2.78 million RMB

Sponsored by: National Natural Science Foundation of China

Project Period: January, 2017─December, 2021

Brief Introduction:

  Tospovirus belongs to a class of plant negative strand RNA viruses which have a broad host range, cause severe diseases and are difficult to control, which brings serious damage to major agricultural crops worldwide every year. Sw-5b in tomato is a plant immune receptor protein which confers broad-spectrum resistance to tospoviruses. It is a typical CC-NB-LRR protein but it has evolved an additional N-terminal domain (NTD). How Sw-5b recognizes the invasion of tospovirus and why Sw-5b confers broad-spectrum resistance against tospoviruses are two issues which remain unclear. Our previous studies of Sw-5b have shown that Sw-5b has a multilayered regulatory mechanism of auto-inhibition and activation in the presence of tospovirus movement protein NSm, a viral elicitor. In this project, we aims to further elaborate how Sw-5b NB-LRR, CC and additional N-terminal domain (NTD) recognize and interact with the viral elicitor NSm, and to disclose how these multilayered interactions between Sw-5b and NSm lead to broad-spectrum resistance of Sw-5b against different tospoviruses. The implementation of this project is expected to understand how Sw-5b recognizes the infection of tospovirus and to reveal the molecular mechanism of its broad-spectrum resistance. Meanwhile, we may identify novel mechanisms for the recognition of and interaction between the tospoviruses and tomato immune receptors during their co-evolution. This project may produce important knowledge which could be applied to utilizing this class of Solanaceae immune receptor proteins with broad-spectrum resistance to effectively control the viral diseases or other pathogens-caused diseases.