The salicylic acid (SA) signaling pathway plays a crucial role in systemic acquired resistance in dicots. Several chemical inducers, which are also called “plant activators,” such as benzothiadiazole (BTH), protect plants from diseases by acting on the SA signaling pathway. Several studies by us and other groups have revealed that rice also has the SA signaling pathway that shares signaling com...

Human LL-37 is a multifunctional antimicrobial peptide of cathelicidin family. It has been shown in recent studies that it can serve as a host's defense against influenza A virus. We now demonstrate in this study how signal peptide LL-37 (SP-LL-37) can be used in rice resistance against bacterial leaf blight and blast. We synthesized LL-37 peptide and subcloned in a recombinant pPZP vector with...

Plants have evolved intracellular immune receptors to detect pathogen proteins known as effectors. How these immune receptors detect effectors remains poorly understood. Here we describe the structural basis for direct recognition of AVR-Pik, an effector from the rice blast pathogen, by the rice intracellular NLR immune receptor Pik. AVR-PikD binds a dimer of the Pikp-1 HMA integrated domain wi...

In order to understand the pathogen’s genetic diversity and dynamics of fungal populations, 34 rice blast isolates collected from various blast endemic areas of India were analyzed using Magnaporthe grisea genome specific microsatellite markers (MGM) and repeat element based Pot2 primer. All the blast isolates showed average pair wise similarities in the range of 0.15 to 0.9 and suggested the l...

Over the last few decades, the use of molecular markers has played an increasing role in rice breeding and genetics. Of the different types of molecular markers, microsatellites have been utilized most extensively, because they can be readily amplified by PCR and the large amount of allelic variation at each locus. Microsatellites are also known as simple sequence repeats (SSR), and they are ty...

A taxonomic study of Streptomyces strain T-36496, which produces an antibiotic effective against rice blast, revealed that it represented a new taxon and it was named Streptomyces novoguineensis sp. nov. The antibiotic, which was named amipurimycin, showed antifungal activity in vitro and considerable curative effect onleaf blast both in green house and field tests at concentrations ranging fro...

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...

The wheat gene Lr34 confers durable and partial field resistance against the obligate biotrophic, pathogenic rust fungi and powdery mildew in adult wheat plants. The resistant Lr34 allele evolved after wheat domestication through two gain-of-function mutations in an ATP-binding cassette transporter gene. An Lr34-like fungal disease resistance with a similar broad-spectrum specificity and durabi...

Two photomorphogenic mutants of rice, coleoptile photomorphogenesis 2 (cpm2) and hebiba, were found to be defective in the gene encoding allene oxide cyclase (OsAOC) by map-based cloning and complementation assays. Examination of the enzymatic activity of recombinant GST-OsAOC indicated that OsAOC is a functional enzyme that is involved in the biosynthesis of jasmonic acid and related compounds...