📋 Tender Overview
Defusing Mini-Chromosomes—The Achilles’ Heel Of The Wheat Blast Pandemic
Tackling Wheat Blast Pandemic To Safeguard Food Supplythe Wheat Blast Pandemic Poses A Major Threat To Our Food Supply, Having Spread Rapidly From Brazil To Southeast Asia And Africa In Just 35 Years. This Fungus, Magnaporthe Oryzae, Is Particularly Dangerous Due To A Special Mini-Chromosome That Makes It Even More Harmful. To Fight This Problem, The Erc-Funded Pandemic Project Aims To Understand How The Fungus Works And Find Ways To Protect Wheat Crops Without Resorting To Genetically Modified Organisms (Gmos). By Shedding Light On The Genetic And Biophysical Intricacies Of Pathogen-Host Interactions, Pandemic Will Pioneer Non-Transgenic Solutions For Wheat Resistance. Through A Multi-Disciplinary Approach Spanning Genetics, Structural Biology, And Gene Editing, Pandemic Strives To Secure Our Agricultural Future Against This Insidious Menace. Ensuring Success In Fighting The Pandemic Means Safeguarding Global Food Security.
Funded Under
European Research Council (Erc)
Total Cost
€ 1 499 999,00
Eu Contribution
€ 1 499 999,00
Coordinated By
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Zur Forderung Der Wissenschaften Ev
Germany
Start Date
1 October 2023
End Date
30 September 2028
Objective
PANDEMIC is an ambitious high-risk/high-gain program to deliver an innovative pathogen-guided strategy for crop disease resistance. The wheat blast pandemic is a clear and present danger to global food security. It is caused by the blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, which, after emerging in Brazil only ~35 years ago, has spread over the last 5 years to Southeast Asia and Africa. We discovered that all isolates of the pandemic wheat blast fungus belong to a single, asexual clonal lineage. These pandemic isolates carry a supernumerary mini-chromosome (mChr) of ~2 Mb, which encodes 19 secreted effector (virulence) proteins and renders the pandemic lineage highly virulent. We propose that this mChr is the Achilles’ heel of the pandemic fungus. In PANDEMIC, my team and I will target the mChr virulence properties by gene editing and engineering of disease resistance genes that target mChr-encoded effectors. The central hypothesis of this project is, that detailed knowledge about the biophysical properties of pathogen effector-host target interactions can guide bioengineering of non-transgenic disease resistance in wheat.
To achieve our goal, we will employ a multi-disciplinary approach combining genetics, structural biology, and gene editing. Specifically, we will pursue the following objectives:
1. GENETICS. Determine the mChr-encoded effectors conferring high virulence on the pandemic wheat blast fungus.
2. BIOPHYSICS. Define the biophysical properties of effector-host target interactions.
3. IMMUNITY. Apply CRISPR/Cas gene editing to deliver innovative, non-transgenic solutions for blast disease management.
At the completion of this project, my team and I will generate a detailed
