Tian Tian, Lijuan Chen, Yufang Ai, Huaqin He. 

Genes (Basel); 2022 Jan 25; 13(2):224.  doi: 10.3390/genes13020224.

Abstract

Due to global warming, high temperature is a significant environmental stress for rice production. Rice (Oryza sativa L.), one of the most crucial cereal crops, is also seriously devastated by Magnaporthe oryzae. Therefore, it is essential to breed new rice cultivars with blast and heat tolerance. Although progress had been made in QTL mapping and RNA-seq analysis in rice in response to blast and heat stresses, there are few reports on simultaneously mining blast-resistant and heat-tolerant genes. In this study, we separately conducted meta-analysis of 839 blast-resistant and 308 heat-tolerant QTLs in rice. Consequently, 7054 genes were identified in 67 blast-resistant meta-QTLs with an average interval of 1.00 Mb. Likewise, 6425 genes were obtained in 40 heat-tolerant meta-QTLs with an average interval of 1.49 Mb. Additionally, using differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the previous research and GO enrichment analysis, 55 DEGs were co-located on the common regions of 16 blast-resistant and 14 heat-tolerant meta-QTLs. Among, OsChib3H-c, OsJAMyb, Pi-k, OsWAK1, OsMT2b, OsTPS3, OsHI-LOX, OsACLA-2 and OsGS2 were the significant candidate genes to be further investigated. These results could provide the gene resources for rice breeding with excellent resistance to these 2 stresses, and help to understand how plants response to the combination stresses of blast fungus and high temperature.

See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35205268/

Figure 1: “Consensus” QTL map related to blast resistance in rice. Chr: chromosome; The bars represent the chromosomes; The molecular markers are located on the right of chromosomes, the physical distances of those in mega base (Mb) are located on the left of chromosomes; The original QTLs are positioned on the right of molecular markers in the “consensus” map; Fragments with green color represent confidence intervals of meta-QTLs in the chromosomes.