The fungus Magnaporthe oryzae Couch (anamorph = Pyricularia oryzae Cavara) (previously known as Magnaporthe grisea (Herbert) Barr) (4) causes gray leaf spot disease of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) (12). In recent years, this disease has become a serious but sporadic problem for turfgrass managers in the mid-Atlantic and midwestern United States (9,12,16, 20,22). The disease can cause ...

The Arabidopsis gene RESISTANCE TO POWDERY MILDEW8.1 (RPW8.1) confers resistance to virulent fungal and oomycete pathogens that cause powdery mildew and downy mildew, respectively. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we show that ectopic expression of RPW8.1 boosts pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) resulting in enhanced resistance against different pathogens in both Arabidop...

Pexophagy, the degradation of peroxisomes via selective autophagy, depends on Atg20/Snx42 function in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Besides its role in selective autophagy, Atg20/Snx42 is also involved in an autophagy-independent endosomal retrieval trafficking, in cooperation with two other sorting nexins, Snx41 and Snx4. Recently, we reported that the sorting nexin MoSnx41, which showed high sequ...

BACKGROUND In our previous studies, we discovered a series of chalcone-based phytopathogenic fungus inhibitors. However, knowledge of their effects, detailed targets and molecular mechanisms in Magnaporthe oryzae (M. oryzae) remained limited. METHODS To explore the expression and function of differentially expressed genes in M. oryzae after treatment with compound C1, we analyzed the expressi...

Blast disease, caused by hemibiotrophic fungus Pyricularia oryzae Sacc. (teleomorph: Magnaporthe oryzae (Hebert) Barr.), previously known as Magnaporthe grisea, is the most serious disease of rice and causes high yield losses in most rice growing regions every year. Blast is an endemic disease in all Iranian and Uruguayan rice fields, with yield losses up to 90 % that has been reported from som...

Saponins are naturally-occurring units with broad diversity and are usually recognized as phytoanticipins. In order to develop new saponin chemical entities with high activity against Magnaporthe oryzae, we selected oleanolic acid (OA), which has wide natural distribution and rich content in plants. We used the ability of OA to act as an aglycone for glycosylation to obtain information on the s...

Approximately 20,000 of the rice-FOX Arabidopsis transgenic lines, which overexpress 13,000 rice full-length cDNAs at random in Arabidopsis, were screened for bacterial disease resistance by dip inoculation with Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 (Pst DC3000). The identities of the overexpressed genes were determined in 72 lines that showed consistent resistance after three independent scre...

Protein ubiquitination, which is highly selective, regulates many important biological processes including cellular differentiation and pathogenesis in eukaryotic cells. Here, we integrated pharmacological, molecular and proteomic approaches to explore the role of ubiquitination in Magnaporthe oryzae, the leading fungal disease of rice world-wide. Inhibition of ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis us...

In Magnaporthe oryzae, the causal ascomycete of the devastating rice blast disease, the conidial germ tube tip must sense and respond to a wide array of requisite cues from the host in order to switch from polarized to isotropic growth, ultimately forming the dome-shaped infection cell known as the appressorium. Although the role for G-protein mediated Cyclic AMP signaling in appressorium forma...

Rice blast is caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, which is the most destructive fungal pathogen affecting rice growing regions worldwide. The rice blast resistance gene Pib confers broad-spectrum resistance against Southeast Asian M. oryzae races. We investigated the allelic diversity of Pib in rice germplasm originating from 12 major rice growing countries. Twenty-five new Pib alleles were identifie...