Next Generation Sequencing Facilitates Quantitative Analysis of Wild Type, ebr1 and EIP1-OX Transcriptomes

Crop breeding for board-spectrum disease resistance is the most profitable strategy to control diseases. However, knowledge on genes and mechanism of board-spectrum resistance is very limited. We fund a rice mutant ebr1 (enhanced blight and blast resistance 1) showed broad-spectrum resistance to both bacterial Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae and fungal Magnaporthe oryzae associated with spontaneous programmed cell death (PCD), autoimmunity activation and stunting. EBR1 is located at the chromosome centromere and encodes a previously unknown RING-type protein with E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. Extensive yeast two-hybrid screening identified one EIP (EBR1-interacting) protein, EIP1, which belongs to the BAG (Bcl-2 associated athanogene) family that have been associated with stress responses and modulation of cell death.cross kingdoms. We showed that EIP1 is a specially target of EBR1 and is a key player activating PCD and immunity including the salicylic acid and jasmonate defense pathways in rice. Its function is suppressed EBR1-mediated degradation through ubiquitination. EIP1-RNAi could restore the PCD and disease resistance phenotypes of ebr1, while EIP1 overexpression caused strong PCD and enhanced resistance to rice pathogens likely ebr1. Together, our study reveals a unique E3 ligase-BAD protein module that orchestrates autoimmunity and trade-off between defense and growth in rice. Overall design: The RNA profiles of two-months of WT line ZH11 and the ebr1 mutant plants and EIP1_OX line 7-2 were generated by deep sequence dependent on illumina Hiseq4000.