Identification of Candidate Susceptibility Genes to Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici in Wheat

Wheat stem rust disease caused by f. sp. ( ) is a global threat to wheat production. Fast evolving populations of limit the efficacy of plant genetic resistance and constrain disease management strategies. Understanding molecular mechanisms that lead to rust infection and disease susceptibility could deliver novel strategies to deploy crop resistance through genetic loss of disease susceptibility. We used comparative transcriptome-based and orthology-guided approaches to characterize gene expression changes associated with infection in susceptible and resistant genotypes as well as the non-host . We targeted our analysis to genes with differential expression in and genes suppressed or not affected in and report several processes potentially linked to susceptibility to , such as cell death suppression and impairment of photosynthesis. We complemented our approach with a gene co-expression network analysis to identify wheat targets to deliver resistance to through removal or modification of putative susceptibility genes.