lncRNA10007 suppresses strawberry resistance to Botrytis cinerea through FnWRKY25-mediated downregulation of FnPR1 expression.

Grey mould is a global disease caused by fungi that seriously threatens the production of many economically important crops, including strawberries. Although long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been confirmed to be involved in regulating various physiological processes in plants, elucidating the mechanisms underlying their role in contributing to plant resistance against Botrytis cinerea infection requires comprehensive investigation. In this study, lncRNA10007 was identified by lncRNA sequencing and observed to be downregulated following the induction of B. cinerea. Western blotting confirmed that this was a non-coding RNA. Through both transient transformation and genetic transformation experiments, we found that silencing lncRNA10007 enhanced strawberry resistance to B. cinerea. Co-expression analysis identified FnWRKY25 as the target gene of lncRNA10007. Expression characteristics and genetic transformation experiments revealed that FnWRKY25 acts as a negative regulator of B. cinerea resistance in strawberry plants. Y1H and other assays demonstrated that FnWRKY25 directly binds to the W-box element in the FnPR1 promoter and reduces its expression. This study identifies a novel signaling cascade in which lncRNA10007 upregulates the expression of FnWRKY25, thereby reducing FnPR1 expression and ultimately negatively regulating strawberry resistance to B. cinerea. These study results enrich the theoretical framework regarding the role of plant lncRNAs in regulating B. cinerea interactions and provide new candidate genes and a theoretical foundation for disease-resistant molecular breeding in strawberries.