Scientists at The Sainsbury Laboratory and the Norwich Research Park
have discovered that the barley andwheat gene conferring resistance to
stripe rust also does the same to completely different pathogens.

The fungal pathogen stripe rust/Puccinia striiformis/causes major global
losses in cereal crop yields, particularly wheat. The species has
independent lineages that infect diverse cereal species, such as wheat
stripe rust and barley stripe rust which infect wheat and barley,
respectively.

In a study published in/Nature Communications/, the authors wrote how
barley resists infection by wheat stripe rust. They found that three
resistance genes/Rps6/,/Rps7,/and/Rps8/contributed to the immune
response in barley towards the non-adapted wheat pathogen. They also
found/Rps7/to cosegregate with barley powdery mildew resistance at the
Mla locus, meaning they are inherited together. This shows that two
distinct haplotypes of Mla have coupled resistance to the adapted
pathogen barley powdery mildew and the non-adapted pathogen wheat stripe
rust.

How does barley resist a wheat pathogen? - The Sainsbury Laboratory
(tsl.ac.uk) [www.tsl.ac.uk]