A Novel SPOTTED LEAF1-1

Programmed cell death (PCD) plays critical roles in plant immunity but must be regulated to prevent excessive damage. In this study, a novel spotted leaf (spl11-1) mutant was identified from an ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS) population. The SPL11-1 gene was genetically mapped to chromosome 12 between the Indel12-37 and Indel12-39 molecular markers, which harbor a genomic region of 27 kb. Annotation of the SPL11-1 genomic region revealed the presence of two candidate genes. Through gene prediction and cDNA sequencing, it was confirmed that the target gene in the spl11-1 mutant is allelic to the rice SPOTTED LEAF (SPL11), hereafter referred to as spl11-1. Sequence analysis of SPL11 revealed a single bp deletion (T) between the spl11-1 mutant and the ‘Shuangkang77009’ wild type. Moreover, protein structure analysis showed that the structural differences between the SPL11-1 and SPL11 proteins might lead to a change in the function of the SPL11 protein. Compared to the ‘Shuangkang77009’ wild type, the spl11-1 mutant showed more disease resistance. The agronomical evaluation showed that the spl11-1 mutant showed more adverse traits. Through further mutagenesis treatment, we obtained the spl11-2 mutant allelic to spl11-1, which has excellent agronomic traits and more improvement and may have certain breeding prospects in future breeding for disease resistance.