Functional Characterization of a Putative Bacterial Wilt Resistance Gene ( RE-bw) in Eggplant.

In this study, a putative resistant gene RE-bw was isolated from bacterial wilt-resistant eggplant inbred line (E-31) by cDNA amplified fragment length polymorphism (cDNA-AFLP) and rapid amplification of cDNA end (RACE). RE-bw has a length of 1,210 bp with 1,116 bp open reading frame (ORF) which encodes 371 amio acids. Bioinformation analysis showed that RE-bw include an NB-ACR and WRKY domain and involved in protein binding and defense response progress. Overexpression and RNAi experiments indicated that the RE-bw was an important gene for bacterial wilt resistance. Further research result showed that RE-bw is involved in enhanced SA content, ROS-scavenging enzymatic activities, cell wall, and lignin to limit the colonization of Ralstonia solanacearum. Bimolecular fluorescence complementation assay and yeast two-hybrid assay confirmed that RE-bw interacted with EDS1, PAD4, NPR1, SGT1, WRKY70, and avirulence effector Popp2 of R. solanacearum. The results provide an important new clue on understanding the mechanism of bacterial wilt disease resistance in eggplant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]