XopZ and ORP1C cooperate to regulate the virulence of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae on Nipponbare

Bacterial leaf blight caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) has always been considered to be one of the most severe worldwide diseases in rice. Xoo strains usually use the highly conserved type III secretion system (T3SS) to deliver virulence effectors into rice cells and further suppress the host’s immunity. Previous studies reported that different Xanthomonas outer protein (Xop) effectors include XopZ from one strain appear to share functional redundancies on suppressing rice PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI). But only xopZ, except other xop genes, could significantly impaire Xoo virulence when individually deleting in PXO99 strains. Thus, the XopZ effector should not only suppress rice PTI pathway, but also has other unknown indispensable pathological functions in PXO99–rice interactions. Here, we also found that ∆xopZ mutant strains displayed lower virulence on Nipponbare leaves compared with PXO99 strains. We identified an oxysterol-binding related protein, ORP1C, as a XopZ-interacting protein in rice. Further studies found that rice ORP1C preliminarily played a positive role in regulating the resistance to PXO99 strains, and XopZ–ORP1C interactions cooperated to regulate the compatible interactions of PXO99-Nipponbare rice. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) burst and PTI marker gene expression data indicated that ORP1C were not directly relevant to the PTI pathway in rice. The deeper mechanisms underlying XopZ–ORP1C interaction and how XopZ and ORP1C cooperate for regulating the PXO99–rice interactions require further exploration.