Transgenic plants articles from across Nature Portfolio

Asian soybean rust (ASR) is a devastating disease of soybean. Here, the author report the identification of an atypical pair of nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) encoding genes and how they function together to confer broad-spectrum resistance to ASR.

Powdery mildew threatens worldwide wheat production. Here, the authors report the cloning of two powdery mildew resistant Pm55 alleles and show that they exhibit distinct interactions with the inhibitor SuPm55 to cause different resistance.

By editing the mitochondrial genome and screening a large number of deletion mutants, this study shows that clean knockout mutants for a mitochondrial gene can be obtained and used to construct a synthetic cytoplasmic male sterility system.

Wheat stripe (yellow) rust is a devastating disease posing a threat to global production. Here, the authors report the cloning of a wheat stripe rust resistance gene encoding a protein with a NAM domain and a ZnF-BED domain using a strategy called sequencing trait-associated mutations (STAM).

Modifying plant lignin pathway to enhance saccharification efficiency is often associated with growth penalty. Here, the authors show that overexpression of Pag-miR408 in poplar leads to enhanced saccharification efficiency and growth in both laboratory and field conditions, and laccase genes are the targets of Pag-miR408.

The inclusion of retrotransposon long terminal repeats — and of other repeated sequences — enhances transfer DNA copy numbers in plant cells during transformation. Gene editing and homologous recombination-mediated gene targeting can therefore be improved by these means: however, the mechanism remains a mystery.

A major bottleneck in plant breeding is the establishment or breakage of genetic linkages by random, naturally occurring meiotic recombination. This problem can be overcome by CRISPR–Cas-mediated chromosome engineering. By inverting ~17 Mb of chromosome 2 of Arabidopsis thaliana, we almost completely suppressed genetic crossovers in nearly the entire chromosome.

How T-DNAs become incorporated into the host chromosome has been a subject of lively debate for the last quarter century. Kralemann et al. report data revealing the mechanism of genomic capture of the right border and validating the role of DNA polymerase θ in the capture of the left border.

Mehta and Vanderschuren advocate for more stringent standards in reporting agricultural biotechnology research.