On March 12th, Professor Li Yi, recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and a full-time faculty member at FAFU since August 2023, published a paper titled “Perception of viral infections and initiation of antiviral defence in rice” in Nature. Building upon his team’s long-term research at Peking University, this study was further advanced through collaborations with FAFU as well as other institutes, revealing for the first time a fundamental mechanism by which rice plants respond to viral infections.
This study witnessed significant collaborative support from the State Key Laboratory of Agricultural and Forestry Biosecurity at FAFU. FAFU research team has made pivotal contributions in refining experimental methodology, conducting data analysis, and optimizing strategies in disease prevention and control. Through close collaboration with the research team at Peking University, they advanced interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research on antiviral defense mechanisms in rice, achieving breakthroughs in basic research and presenting new insights and application potential for global rice disease resistance breeding. This mechanism centres on the perception of viral CP by the RBR-type E3 ligase RBRL, which functions as a sensor for the subsequent antiviral defense in the host.
Dr. Huang Yu, Ph.D. student Yang Jialin, and postdoctoral research fellow Sun Xi from Peking University are co-first authors of the paper, while Professor Li Yi (with FAFU listed as a corresponding affiliation) and former postdoctoral research fellow Yang Zhirui (now associate professor at China Agricultural University) serve as corresponding authors. Chen Changtian and Han Yanhong from the College of Plant Protection at FAFU also contributed to the study. This study was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (2021YFA1300702) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (32090010).
Correspondant/Photogragher: College of Plant Protection
Translators: Chen Jun, International College
Huang Yujie, International College