Thirteen polyporphic microsatellite markers suitable for population genetic structure analysis and ABC transporter and signal transduction coding genes variation measurement were developed for rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe grisea. Polymorphism was evaluated by using forty-six isolates collected from diverse geographical locations and rice varieties. Preliminary results indicated that each locu...

pathogens such as Colletotrichum lagenarium and Magnaporthe grisea, melanization of appressoria is essential for penetration into the host plant.1) Fungal conidia germinate and the tips of germ tubes differentiate into appressoria, which synthesize melanin. The melanin mediates the buildup of pressure in the appressorium and this high pressure provides the essential driving force for mechanical...

Sphingomonas carotinifaciens strain L9-754 T (DSM 27347) is a gram-negative, chemoheterotrophic, and rod-shaped endophyte isolated from the stem tissues of Jatropha curcas L. This has putative in vitro antagonistic ability against plant pathogenic fungus Magnaporthe grisea. A draft genome L9-754T was obtained using PacBio SMRT cell platform. By analyzing L9-754T, gene cluster (GQR91_18700 - GQR...

Rice blast caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the most destructive fungal diseases of rice and a model for studying fungalplant interactions. The fungus penetrates plant cells with appressoria and develops the narrow primary invasive hyphae (IH) and, subsequently, the bulbous secondary IH. As a hemibiotrophic pathogen, biotrophic IH are enclosed in the extra-invasive-hyphal membrane (EIHM) ...

Rice blast resistant gene, Pi54 cloned from rice line, Tetep, is effective against diverse isolates of Magnaporthe oryzae. In this study, we prospected the allelic variants of the dominant blast resistance gene from a set of 92 rice lines to determine the nucleotide diversity, pattern of its molecular evolution, phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary dynamics, and to develop allele specifi...

Magnaporthe oryzae causes rice blast disease, which is the most serious disease of cultivated rice worldwide. We previously developed the Magnaporthe grisea–Orzya sativa (MGOS) database as a repository for the M. oryzae and rice genome sequences together with a comprehensive set of functional interaction data generated by a major consortium of U.S. researchers. The MGOS database has now undergo...

In prokaryotes and eukaryotes, multidrug resistance (MDR) transporters use energy-dependent efflux action to regulate the intracellular levels of antibiotic or xenobiotic compounds. Using mutational analysis of ABC3, we define an important role for such MDR-based efflux during the host penetration step of Magnaporthe grisea pathogenesis. Mutants lacking ABC3 were completely nonpathogenic but we...

In a previous transcriptome analysis of early response genes in rice during Magnaporthe oryzae infection, we identified a CONSTANS-like (COL) gene OsCOL9. In the present study, we investigated the functional roles of OsCOL9 in blast resistance. OsCOL9 belonged to group II of the COL protein family, and it contained a BB-box and a C-terminal CCT (CONSTANS, COL and TOC1) domain. OsCOL9 was found ...

Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe grisea, is the most important fungal disease of cultivated rice worldwide. We have developed a strategy for creating disease resistance to M. grisea whereby pathogen-induced expression of the afp (antifungal protein) gene from Aspergillus giganteus occurs in transgenic rice plants. Here, we evaluated the activity of the promoters from three maize pathogenesis-r...