Functional and Translational Genomics in Cotton Disease Resistance

An important goal of our research is to translate knowledge from studying model plants to improve crop agricultural performance. We have developed various functional genomic, cellular, and biochemical platforms in cotton, which serves as a significant source of fiber, feed, and oil products, to understand stress signaling and identify essential components to improve cotton resilience to pathogen infections, in particular fungal wilt pathogens and bacterial blight. We are developing a targeted systems approach and association genomics to examine and identify cotton immune receptor genes and provide genetic resources to improve cotton resistance to fusarium wilt disease, caused by soil-borne fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum. We also aim tounderstand the pathogenicity and genetic diversity of F. oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum on cotton.



Xanthomonas mediates bacterial blight susceptibility by targeting cotton plasma membrane-resident GhSWEET sugar transporters to acquire nutrient and disrupt apoplast extracellular metric integrity. See Current Opinion in Plant Biology (2019) 50: 95-103.

Key references:

  1. Babilonia, K., Wang, P., Liu, L., Jamieson, P., Mormile B., Rodrigues, O., Lin, W., Danmaigona Clement, C., Menezes de Moura, S., Alves-Ferreira, M., Finlayson, S.A., Nichols, R.L., Wheeler, T.A., Dever, J.K., Shan, L., and He, P. (2020) A non-proteinaceous Fusarium cell wall extract triggers receptor-like protein-dependent immune responses in Arabidopsis and cotton. New Phytologist. 10.1111/nph.17146.
  2. Wang, P., Zhou, L., Jamieson, P., Zhang, L., Zhao, Z., Babilonia, K., Shao, W., Wu, L.,Mustafa, R., Amin, I., Diomaiuti, A., Pontiggia, D., Ferrari, S., Hou, Y., He, P., and Shan, L.(2020) The cotton wall-associated kinase GhWAK7A mediates responses to fungal wilt pathogens by complexing with the chitin sensory receptors.  Plant Cell 32: 3978–4001.
  3. Cox, K. L., Meng, F., Wilkins, K. E., Li, F., Wang, P., Booher, N. J., Chen, L. Q., Zheng, H., Gao, X., Zheng, Y., Fei, Z., Yu, J. Z., Isakeit, T., Wheeler, T., Frommer, W. B., He, P., Bogdanove, A. J., and Shan, L. (2017) TAL effector-mediated induction of a SWEET sucrose transporter confers susceptibility to bacterial blight of cotton. Nat Commun. 8:15588, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15588.