Gao Caixia's team from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental
Biology and Qiu Jinlong's team from the Institute of Microbiology have
developed a new wheat mutant,/Tamlo-R32/, which shows robust resistance
to powdery mildew disease and does not display any growth or yield
defects. In 2014, the two teams have developed a wheat variant with
robust disease resistance, but it grew poorly compared to wild-type wheat.

In this study, the researchers found that the/Tamlo-R32/mutant harbors a
large 304-kilobase pair deletion in the/TaMLO-B1/locus in addition to
two premature stop codons in the/TaMLO-A1/and/TaMLO-D1/loci. Notably,
the large deletion in the wheat B genome resulted in an altered local
chromatin landscape, leading to the ectopic activation of/TaTMT3B/.
Through compensation and knockout studies, the researchers found
that/TaTMT3B/has a role in alleviating growth and yield penalties
associated with/MLO/disruption.

Scientists Leverage Multiplex Genome Editing to Create Disease-resistant
Wheat----Chinese Academy of Sciences (cas.cn)
[english.cas.cn]