A genome-wide comparison of NB-LRR type of resistance gene analogs (RGA) in the plant kingdom

Plants express resistance (R) genes to recognize invaders and prevent the spread of pathogens. To analyze nucleotide binding site, leucine-rich repeat (NB-LRR) genes, we constructed a fast pipeline to predict and classify the R gene analogs (RGAs) by applying in-house matrices. With predicted ∼37,000 RGAs, we can directly compare RGA contents across entire plant lineages, from green algae to flowering plants. We focused on the highly divergent NBLRRs in land plants following the emergence of mosses. We identified entire loss of Toll/Interleukin-1 receptor, NBLRR (TNL) in Poaceae family of monocots and interestingly from Mimulus guttatus (a dicot), which leads to the possibility of species-specific TNL loss in other sequenced flowering plants. Using RGA maps, we have elucidated a positive correlation between the cluster sizes of NB-LRRs and their numbers. The cluster members were observed to consist of the same class of NB-LRRs or their variants, which were probably generated from a single locus for an R gene. Our website (http://sol.kribb.re.kr/PRGA/), called plant resistance gene analog (PRGA), provides useful information, such as RGA annotations, tools for predicting RGAs, and analyzing domain profiles. Therefore, PRGA provides new insights into R-gene evolution and is useful in applying RGA as markers in breeding and or systematic studies.

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