LncRNA109897-JrCCR4-JrTLP1b forms a positive feedback loop to regulate walnut resistance against anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides

Abstract

Walnut anthracnose induced by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides is a disastrous disease that severely restricts the development of the walnut industry in China. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are involved in adaptive responses to disease, but their roles in the regulation of walnut anthracnose resistance response are not well defined. In this study, transcriptome analysis demonstrated that a C. gloeosporioides-induced lncRNA, lncRNA109897, located upstream from the target gene JrCCR4, upregulated the expression of JrCCR4. JrCCR4 interacted with JrTLP1b and promoted its transcriptional activity. In turn, JrTLP1b induced the transcription of lncRNA109897 to promote its expression. Meanwhile, transient expression in walnut leaves and stable transformation of Arabidopsis thaliana further proved that lncRNA, JrCCR4, and JrTLP1b improve the resistance of C. gloeosporioides. Collectively, these findings provide insights into the mechanism by which the lncRNA109897-JrCCR4-JrTLP1b transcriptional cascade regulates the resistance of walnut to anthracnose.

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32001340), the Improved Variety Program of Shandong Province of China (2020LZGC090102), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2020QC169). We thank the laboratory of Chen Xuesen of College of Horticulture Sciences and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University for providing plasmid and yeast strains.

Author contributions

H.F. and K.Q.Y. devised and supervised the project. R.Z., Y.D., C.W., X.L., and S.X. performed the experiments. J.L. and Q.L. analysed the data. R.Z., Y.D. and H.F. wrote the original draft manuscript, R.Z. and Y.D. contributed equally to this work. X.M., W.L., S.Z., N.W., and K.Q.Y. reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript.

Data availability

The data that supports the findings of this study are available in this article and in the supplementary material of this article. The sequence of lncRNA109897 has been deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information Sequence Read Archive (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/) with project number OP627665.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there have no conflicts of interest associated with this work.

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