Identification and Characterisation of Disease Resistance Pathway Genes in Jute (Corchorus spp.)

Plant disease resistance genes, mainly known as the R genes, play a vital role in plant defence system through encoding proteins for pathogen detection. Most plant R genes have a nucleotide-binding site (NBS) and a leucine-rich repeat (LRR) region. The NBS region is preceded either by a coiled-coil (CC) domain or a TIR (Toll/interleukin-1 receptor like) domain. With a view to identifying and characterizing all LBS domain containing genes in jute, degenerate primers were designed from the conserved MBS domain. Subsequent cloning and sequencing identified the presence of both CC-NBS-LRR and TIR-NBS-LRR domain containing disease resistance genes.