Tissue-specific activation of DOF11 promotes rice resistance to sheath blight disease and increases grain weight via activation of SWEET14.

Sugar will eventually be exported transporter (SWEET) is a family of sugar transporters that plays a critical role during host and pathogen interaction (Bezrutczyk et al., 2018). In rice, SWEET11/Xa13, SWEET13/Xa25, and SWEET14 were identified as targets of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae effectors (Antony et al., 2010; Hutin et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2006). However, the role of SWEET genes in rice and Rhizoctonia solani, the causative agent of sheath blight disease (ShB), is largely unknown. Our previous transcriptome data showed that SWEET14 expression is sensitive to R. solani infection (De Peng Yuan, 2020). qPCR results verified that R. solani infection dramatically induces SWEET14 expression along with a pathogen-related protein PBZ1 (Figure 1a).