DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2529950123 ISSN: 0027-8424
Natural variation of
CTS1
confers cold tolerance and blast resistance in rice
Wei Ye, Wendong Ma, Yingxiu Li, Zhenhua Guo, Shilei Gao, Haifeng Guo, Zezhong Yan, Sijing Shi, Shichen Han, Qijin Lou, Jin Li, Yunsong Gu, Runbin Su, Haozhen Wang, Hafiz Ghulam Nabi, Yanchen Liu, Huanhuan Zhu, Hongliang Zhang, Zhanying Zhang, Xingming Sun, Yawen Zeng, Xujun Chen, Yanjiang Feng, Zichao Li, Jinjie Li
Improving multistress resilience in crops is essential for sustainable agriculture, yet the genetic mechanisms coordinating abiotic and biotic stress responses remain poorly understood. This study identifies
CTS1
(
Cold Tolerance at the Seedling stage1
), encoding the transcription factor OsWRKY74, as a key pleiotropic regulator that mediates both cold tolerance and blast resistance in rice. Through genome-wide association study, we found that
CTS1
negatively regulates cold tolerance at the seedling stage. The natural allele
CTS1
Hap1
confers greater cold tolerance than
CTS1
Hap2
by mildly repressing the expression of
CTB2
, thereby maintaining sterol glycoside homeostasis and membrane stability. Furthermore, during
Magnaporthe oryzae
infection, CTS1 activates the expression of
OsHSP90
and upregulates pathogenesis-related genes, thereby enhancing blast resistance. Our findings reveal a dual-function mechanism of
CTS1
in stress adaptation and provide valuable alleles for breeding multistress resilient rice varieties.