Journal Article

Structural basis of pathogen recognition by an integrated HMA domain in a plant NLR immune receptor

Kanzaki, H, Maqbool, A, Stevenson, CEM, Banfield, MJ, Uemura, A, Saitoh, H, Franceschetti, M, Kamoun, S, Terauchi, R

2015

Overview

Plants have evolved intracellular immune receptors to detect pathogen proteins known as effectors. How these immune receptors detect effectors remains poorly understood. Here we describe the structural basis for direct recognition of AVR-Pik, an effector from the rice blast pathogen, by the rice intracellular NLR immune receptor Pik. AVR-PikD binds a dimer of the Pikp-1 HMA integrated domain with nanomolar affinity. The crystal structure of the Pikp-HMA/AVR-PikD complex enabled design of mutations to alter protein interaction in yeast and in vitro, and perturb effector-mediated response both in a rice cultivar containing Pikp and upon expression of AVR-PikD and Pikp in the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana. These data reveal the molecular details of a recognition event, mediated by a novel integrated domain in an NLR, which initiates a plant immune response and resistance to rice blast disease. Such studies underpin novel opportunities for engineering disease resistance to plant pathogens in staple food crops. Plant diseases reduce harvests of the world's most important food crops including wheat, rice, potato, and corn. These diseases are important for both global food security and local subsistence farming. To fight these diseases, crops (like all plants) have an immune system that can detect the telltale molecules produced by disease-causing microbes (also known as pathogens) and mount a defence response to protect the plant. Nucleotide-binding, leucine-rich repeat receptors (or NLRs for short) are plant proteins that survey the inside of plant cells looking for these telltale molecules. These receptors have played a central role in efforts to breed disease resistance into crop plants for decades, but little is known about how they work. Maqbool, Saitoh et al. have now used a range of biochemical, structural biology and activity-based assays to study how one NLR from rice directly interacts with a molecule from the rice blast fungus. This fungus causes the most important disease of rice (called rice blast), and the fungal molecule in question is also known as an ‘effector’ protein. A technique called X-ray crystallography was used to reveal the three-dimensional structure of the effector bound to part of the NLR called the ‘integrated HMA domain’. Biochemical techniques were then used to measure how strongly the effector (and other related effectors) interacted with this domain of the NLR. These results, combined with a close examination of the three-dimensional structure, allowed a set of changes to be made to the effector that stopped it interacting with the NLR protein domain in the laboratory. Maqbool, Saitoh et al. then performed experiments in rice plants and showed that changes to the effector that stopped it interacting with the NLR domain also stopped the effector from triggering a defence response in plants. Similar results were also obtained in experiments that used the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana. In the middle of the 20th century, an American plant pathologist called Harold Henry Flor proposed that the outcomes of interactions between plants and disease-causing microbes were based on interactions between specific biological molecules. The findings of Maqbool, Saitoh et al. provide a new structural basis for this model. A detailed picture of these molecular interactions will allow researchers to engineer tailored NLRs that detect a wider range of pathogen molecules. In the future such an approach could contribute to efforts to protect the world's most important crops from plant diseases.

• Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd,eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
• Subject: Biophysics and Structural Biology / Crystallography, X-Ray / effector protein / integrated sensor domain / Models, Molecular / Nicotiana - genetics / Nicotiana - immunology / Oryza - immunology / Plant Biology / plant disease resistance / Plant Proteins - chemistry / Plant Proteins - genetics / Plant Proteins - immunology / Plant Proteins - metabolism / Protein Conformation / Protein Interaction Mapping / Receptors, Immunologic - chemistry / Receptors, Immunologic - genetics / Receptors, Immunologic - metabolism / rice / rice blast disease