Summary
This is a review of Wood and Panwar, et al. bioRxiv (https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.16.994095) posted on March 18, 2020. Here, Wood and Panwar et al. assessed whether vesicular trafficking proteins, which have been previously identified to have a functional role in the innate immune response in Arabidopsis, also play a role in Fusarium graminearum recognition. In this pre-print manuscript, the authors identified two Arabidopsis mutants,atmin7-1 and atmin7-2 , that are hyper-susceptible toF. graminearum as indicated by an enhancement of FHB disease symptoms compared to the Arabidopsis Col-0 control. These data may suggest MIN7, which encodes an ARF-GEF protein previously shown to be targeted by the Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato effector HopM1, has a role in mediating a defense response against F. graminearum . To test whether their observations from Arabidopsis and can be translated to a crop plant such as wheat, Wood and Panwar et al. identified three co-orthologous Min7 genes in wheat and subsequently used Barley Stripe Mosaic Virus (BSMV)-mediated virus-induce gene silencing (VIGS) knockdown TaMin7 expression. Significantly, TaMin7 -silenced wheat displayed enhanced susceptibility to F. graminearum and significantly more FHB disease symptoms. Collectively, these data suggest disruption of MIN7 function in both Arabidopsis and wheat may compromise trafficking of innate immunity signals, thereby enhancing susceptibility to F. graminearum .