Wheat Fusarium head blight (FHB) causes the reduction of yields and the quality degradation, as well as the contamination of mycotoxins that are produced by FHB pathogens and enter into the food chains, thus posing a serious threat to humans and farm animals. Plant germplasm resources with natural resistance against wheat FHB are inadequate. Thus, the isolation of antibodies and their genes from animals provides new resistance resources for the improvement of FHB resistance in wheat, as a new approach for other plants that lack natural resistance germplasms against pests. A disease-resistance antibody can specifically target the highly conserved transmembrane glyoxal oxidase in Fusarium and inhibit its oxidative reaction. A combination of the disease-resistance antibody, the antifungal peptide (AFP) and the regulatory cis-elements for plant expression will generate the antibody-AFP fusions that can be induced by FHB pathogens on the infection organs of wheat; this pathogen-inducible expression can restrict the fungal spreading and the mycotoxin accumulation in wheat, which is similar to the active immunity in mammalians that have been vaccinated. This paper reviews recent research progresses on FHB pathogens for preparation of antigens, expression and functional characterization in vitro and in planta of disease-resistance antibodies and their antibody fusions, the structure and the function of an antigen-encoding gene, and the resistance mechanisms of disease-resistance antibodies.

antibody-mediated disease resistance  /  wheat Fusarium head blight  /  Fusarium pathogen  /  membrane protein  /  glyoxal oxidase  /  mycotoxin