Fungal pathogens destroy roughly 20% of the world’s food crops before they reach the field, and another 20% after harvest, even with chemical sprays. Researchers have identified a network of genes in lettuce that controls resistance to these fungi, and some of those genes work across different plant species. But the network is complex—dozens of genes cross-regulate each other—so simply tweaking one gene at a time doesn’t reliably produce resistant plants. This project will build computational models of that gene network to predict exactly which genetic rewiring strategies will boost resistance without harming yield, size, or nutritional value. The team will then use precision gene editing to introduce small mutations in regulatory DNA, testing the predictions in commercial lettuce varieties. If successful, the approach could reduce reliance on fungicides and help crops stay ahead of evolving fungal strains. The tools and workflows will be shared openly with the UK research community, so the same strategy could be applied to other crops and traits.
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Plant-infecting fungi cause major crop losses. They are responsible for ~20% of crop losses before harvest, even when chemical control measures are used, and a further ~20% post-harvest. Plant varieties with resistance to infection are urgently required to reduce the use of chemicals and to combat emerging fungal strains that are resistant to current crop protection products. However, the basis of plant resistance against many of these pathogenic fungi is highly complex, involving many genes, which cross-regulate each other and numerous downstream genes to influence disease progression. In previous work, we have identified a network of genes that mediates resistance to fungal pathogens in lettuce. Importantly, we have also shown that several genes within this network also impact disease resistance across plant lineages. In this project, we will address the challenge of developing disease-resistant crops by applying computational modelling to inform the engineering of this network. This will allow us to predict which re-wiring strategies will maximise plant resistance to infection and minimise any impact on other crop traits such as size, shape and nutritive value. We will use several genetic techniques to engineer resistance into plants as these techniques will provide us with valuable data, enabling us to better understand plant responses to pathogens. However, we aim to identify a strategy for conferring resistance via the use of precision gene editing tools to introduce small mutations into the regulatory regions of the genome. We will share this strategy with our industrial partner to enable this to be tested in a commercial variety of lettuce. During the award, we will communicate with industry, policy-makers, and the general public about our project and crop biotechnology in general. We will also make all the knowledge, tools, methods and workflows developed in this project available to the UK research community to enable their application to other crop traits.
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