András Kis

Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology (MATE)

Infection of Wheat dwarf virus (WDV) strains, on barley results in dwarf disease imposing severe economic losses on crop production. Since the natural resistance resources against this virus are limited it is imperative to elaborate a biotechnological approach providing effective and safe immunity to wide range of WDV strains. Because of the vector...

Predators influence the behaviour of prey and by doing so they potentially reduce pathogen transmission by a vector. Arthropod predators have been shown to reduce the consumption of plant biomass by pest herbivores, but their cascading non-consumptive effect on vector insects’ feeding behaviour and subsequent pathogen transmission has not been inve...

Wheat dwarf virus (WDV) is an economically important, phloem‐limited, insect‐transmitted virus belonging to the Geminiviridae family (Tholt et al., 2018). WDV strains infect both wheat and barley causing severe yield losses and the natural resistance resources are limited (Nygren et al., 2015). Direct utilization of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to inhibi...

Grain Width and Weight 2 (GW2) is an E3-ubiquitin ligase-encoding gene that negatively regulates the size and weight of the grain in cereal species. Therefore, disabling GW2 gene activity was suggested for enhancing crop productivity. We show here that CRISPR/Cas-mediated mutagenesis of the barley GW2.1 homologue results in the development of elong...

Incorporating the centromere-specific histone H3 protein CENH3 into the centromeric nucleosomes is indispensable for accurate centromere function and balanced chromosome segregation in most eukaryotes, including higher plants. In the cell nuclei of interspecific hybrids, divergent centromeric DNAs cohabit and lead the corresponding parental chromos...

Key message Barley reproductive fitness and efficient heat stress adaptation requires the activity of TFIIS, the elongation cofactor of RNAPII. Abstract Regulation of transcriptional machinery and its adaptive role under different stress conditions are studied extensively in the dicot model plant Arabidopsis, but our knowledge on monocot species r...

Regulation of transcriptional machinery and its adaptive role under different stress conditions are studied extensively in the dicot model plant Arabidopsis, but our knowledge on monocot species remains elusive. TFIIS is an RNA polymerase II associated transcription elongation co-factor. Previously it was shown that TFIIS ensures efficient transcri...

Key message Barley AGO4 proteins complement expressional changes of epigenetically regulated genes in Arabidopsis ago4-3 mutant and show a distinct affinity for the 5′ terminal nucleotide of small RNAs, demonstrating functional conservation and divergence. Abstract The function of Argonaute 4 (AGO4) in Arabidopsis thaliana has been extensively cha...

Background Interspecific hybridisation is a powerful tool for increasing genetic diversity in plant breeding programmes. Hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum, 2n = 42) × barley (Hordeum vulgare, 2n = 14) intergeneric hybrids can contribute to the transfer of agronomically useful traits by creating chromosome addition or translocation lines as well as...

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is an economically important crop cultivated in temperate climates all over the world. Adverse environmental factors negatively affect its survival and productivity. RNA silencing is a conserved pathway involved in the regulation of growth, development and stress responses. The key components of RNA silencing are the Dic...

Figure S1 Positions of the 19 selected conservative target sequences with the PAM site on the alignment of two barley (AM747816.1, FM210034.1) and two wheat (FN806785, FN806786) infecting WDV genomes. Figure S2 The sequence details of the four selected target sites (virion‐sense orientation) with the spacer sequences of the sgRNAs. Figure S3. T7...

To isolate total RNA, grains were ground to fine powder in liquid nitrogen. The powder (100 mg) was suspended by vortexing in 600 μL extraction buffer (0.1 M glycine-NaOH, pH 9.0, 100 mM NaCl, 10 mM EDTA, 2% SDS, and 1% sodium lauryl-sarcosine) and then mixed with an equal volume of phenol-chloroform-isoamyl alcohol (25:24:1). After centrifugation...