Abscisic acid-, stress-, ripening-induced 2 like protein, TaASR2L, promotes wheat resistance to stripe rust

Wheat stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (Pst), is one of the most destructive wheat diseases. The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays a key regulatory role in plant response to stress. ABA-, stress-, ripening-induced proteins (ASR) have been shown to be abundantly induced in response to biotic and abiotic stresses to protect plants from damage. However, the function of wheat ASR2-like protein (TaASR2L) in plants under biotic stress remains unclear. In this study, transient silencing of TaASR2L using a virus-induced gene silencing system substantially reduced wheat resistance to Pst. TaASR2L interaction with serine/arginine-rich splicing factor SR30-like (TaSR30) was validated mainly in the nucleus. Knockdown of TaSR30 expression substantially reduced wheat resistance to Pst. Overexpression of TaASR2L and TaSR30 demonstrated that they can promote the expression of ABA- and resistance-related genes to enhance wheat resistance to Pst. In addition, the expression levels of TaSR30 and TaASR2L were substantially increased by exogenous ABA, and the resistance of wheat to Pst was increased, and the expression of PR genes was induced. Therefore, these results suggest that TaASR2L interacts with TaSR30 by promoting PR genes expression and enhancing wheat resistance to Pst.