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Review
. 2018 Dec:46:58-64.
doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2018.02.003. Epub 2018 Mar 14.

Cross-kingdom RNA trafficking and environmental RNAi-nature's blueprint for modern crop protection strategies

Qiang Cai  1 , Baoye He  1 , Karl-Heinz Kogel  2 , Hailing Jin  3
Affiliations
Review

Cross-kingdom RNA trafficking and environmental RNAi-nature's blueprint for modern crop protection strategies

Qiang Cai et al. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2018 Dec.

Abstract

In plants, small RNA (sRNA)-mediated RNA interference (RNAi) is critical for regulating host immunity against bacteria, fungi, oomycetes, viruses, and pests. Similarly, sRNAs from pathogens and pests also play an important role in modulating their virulence. Strikingly, recent evidence supports that some sRNAs can travel between interacting organisms and induce gene silencing in the counter party, a mechanism termed cross-kingdom RNAi. Exploiting this new knowledge, host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) by transgenic expression of pathogen gene-targeting double-stranded (ds)RNA has the potential to become an important disease-control method. To circumvent transgenic approaches, direct application of dsRNAs or sRNAs (environmental RNAi) onto host plants or post-harvest products leads to silencing of the target microbe/pest gene (referred to spray-induced gene silencing, SIGS) and confers efficient disease control. This review summarizes the current understanding of cross-kingdom RNA trafficking and environmental RNAi and how these findings can be developed into novel effective strategies to fight diseases caused by microbial pathogens and pests.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cross-kingdom RNA trafficking and spray-induced gene silencing for plant protection against eukaryotic pathogens. (a) Cross-kingdom RNA transfer and gene silencing in a plant and an interacting pathogen. Plant pathogens deliver sRNAs into host plant cells, where they suppress host immune responses by hijacking host cell RNAi machinery (red block arrow). Host cells also deliver sRNAs into pathogen cells, either artificial HIGS sRNAs or endogenous sRNAs, to target virulence genes and other essential genes of pathogens (purple block arrow). (b) Mechanism of SIGS to counteract pathogen virulence. The sprayed short or long dsRNAs, which target pathogen virulence-related genes, can either translocate directly to the eukaryotic pathogen (purple arrows), via uptake from the plant surface (purple dotted arrows), or indirectly through the host cells (red arrows). These RNAs can also move systemically between cells or to other tissues in the plant, most likely through plasmodesmata and vascular bundles.
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