04 December, 2022
The demonstration that a regulatory protein linked to stress responses in plants also serves as a master switch for anti-pathogen immunity could help breeders develop more pest-resistant and climate-resilient crops.
The KAUST-led discovery suggests that, rather than focusing on individual immune signals involved in plant defenses, agricultural scientists looking to implement sustainable crop protection strategies could simply focus their efforts on this one all-important protein.
“The identification of OXI1 as a single molecular switch of immunity offers a number of big advantages in molecular breeding,” says study lead Heribert Hirt, a professor of plant science at KAUST.
Image: KAUST plant scientists have revealed the role that the regulatory protein OXI1 plays in anti-pathogen immunity in plants. In this image, the plant specimens overexpressed OXI1, which manifests in the brown coloring when stained with a special dye.
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