What is it about?
As climate change drives the spread of plant diseases, protecting crops like rice is more urgent than ever. Rice relies on special gene regulators, called transcription factors, to turn defense genes on or off during infection. Six major groups of these regulators play key roles in its natural immunity. This article reviews what plant scientists have discovered about these gene switches and how this knowledge can be applied to develop stronger, disease-resistant rice that supports global food security.
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Why is it important?
Plant diseases are spreading faster as the climate warms, threatening one of the world’s most important foods: rice. Behind rice’s natural defenses are “gene switches” called transcription factors, which can either help the plant fight disease or leave it more vulnerable. This article brings together discoveries about six major groups of these switches in rice. By revealing both their protective and harmful roles, this work points the way toward breeding rice varieties that are tougher, healthier, and more reliable in a changing world.
Perspectives
Writing this article was an opportunity to highlight the ‘gene switches’—the transcription factor families that shape how rice responds to disease. What excites us most is that these families don’t play a simple role: some boost immunity, while others unexpectedly weaken it. This duality makes the story more complex, but also more important, because understanding it could change the way we breed crops. We hope readers see that even something as technical as transcription factors connects directly to the urgent, global challenge of protecting our food supply in a changing climate.
Seungmin Son
National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Functions of transcription factor superfamilies in rice immunity, The Crop Journal, February 2025, Tsinghua University Press,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cj.2024.10.006.
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