Recently, a paper entitled “Suppression of plant immunity by Verticillium dahliae effector Vd6317 through AtNAC53 association” has been published by The Plant Journal. In the paper, researchers from the Institute of Cotton Research (CCRI) report that the molecular mechanism of Verticillium dahliae effector Vd6317 represses the host plant resistance against Verticillium wilt, providing important molecular basis for cotton disease resistance breeding and improvement.

Verticillium wilt, caused by Verticillium dahliae , is known as the “cotton cancer”, which is the first disease in cotton production and causes the huge economic losses, but its pathogenic is still unclear.

This study found that the expression of Vd6317 enhanced the virulence of virus and Verticillium dahliae on N. benthamiana and Arabidopsis, cotton, respectively. And the virulence effect is mainly depending on its protein stability controlled by the conserved residue 193L. Further study found that Vd6317 interacted with AtNAC53, thereby changing the localization and alleviating the transcriptional activation effect of AtNAC53 on its downstream regulatory gene AtUGT74E2 , and resulting in enhancing the susceptible of host to Verticillium dahliae . These result indicated that AtNAC53 and AtUGT74E2 were essential for full virulence of V. dahliae mediated by Vd6317. This study reveals that the importance of Vd6317 during the Verticillium dahliae infection, providing theoretical support for the analysis the mechanism of Verticillium dahliae infection on host.

This study has been supported by projects such as the National Key Research and Development Plan (2022YFF1001400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32201731), Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS-CSIAF-202402). The co-first authors of this paper are Liu Lisen, an assistant research fellow from the China Cotton Institute, Li Jianing, a PhD candidate from China Cotton Institute, Wang Zhaohan, a Master's degree candidate from Henan Normal University, and Zhou Haodan, an assistant research fellow from the China Cotton Institute. Researcher Ge Xiaoyang from the China Cotton Institute, Associate Professor Zhao Hang from Qufu Normal University, and Professor Duan Hongying from Henan Normal University are the co corresponding authors.

The article can be found: https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.16883

Proposed model demonstrating the role of Vd6317 in regulating plant immunity

By Lisen Liu (liulisen@caas.cn)