science
Scientists engineered rice to fight the fungus starving 60 million
The fungus has been winning for decades. Someone redesigned the lock.
Scientists at the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom have engineered a plant immune receptor to recognize a fungus that destroys enough rice each year to feed roughly 60 million people. The target is Magnaporthe oryzae, which causes blast disease, the worst fungal threat to cultivated rice and a growing problem for wheat and barley across Asia and Africa. Working with colleagues at Kobe University in Japan, the team studied a newer class of defense proteins called tandem kinase proteins. Using crystallography, they mapped how these receptors bind the molecules the fungus deploys during infection, then modified them to detect two different fungal threats at once. That dual recognition is rare in nature. "We've discovered something that could lead to a potential intervention on what is the worst fungal disease of cereals," said Professor Mark Banfield. The work is early. It has only been tested in individual wheat cells, not whole plants. The eggs are no longer in one basket.
