Balancing growth and immunity of potato by humidity-dependent expression of a late blight resistance gene.

Humidity-activated cis-regulatory elements enable potato plants to resist late blight without growth penalties in high humidity conditions.

• Why it matters: Balancing disease resistance and plant growth remains a challenge, especially under environmental conditions like high humidity that promote pathogen development. Understanding how to control resistance gene expression in response to humidity could improve crop resilience without sacrificing yield.
• What they did: Researchers identified humidity-activated cis-regulatory elements (HAEs) in Solanum lycopersicum through transcriptomics and chromatin accessibility analysis, and used these to create transgenic Solanum tuberosum lines with a humidity-inducible promoter driving a late blight resistance gene.
• The result: The transgenic lines showed resistance levels comparable to overexpression lines but avoided growth suppression and tuber yield loss in garden experiments, demonstrating a promising strategy for environment-responsive disease resistance in crops.