Comparative genomic analyses have revealed extensive colinearity in gene orders in distantly related taxa in mammals and grasses, which opened new horizons for evolutionary study. The objective of our study was to assess syntenic relationships of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for disease resistance in cereals by using a model system in which rice and barley were used as the hosts and the blast ...

forty monoconidial isolates of magnaporthe grisea were examined, for an identification of vegetative compatibility group and a characterization of genetic diversity, using rep-pcr genomic fingerprinting. the isolates were collected from weeds digitaria sanguinalis (crabgrass), setaria italica (foxtail millet), echinochloa crus-galli (barnyard millet), and some other unknown ones during 2003 - 2...

Magnaporthe grisea is a model fungus for studying fungus-plant interactions. Two mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase genes, PMK1 and MPS1, have been implicated in regulating plant infection processes in M. grisea. However, transcription factors activated by these MAP kinases are not well studied. In this study we functionally characterized the MIG1 gene that encodes a MADS-box transcription ...

Phytopathogenic fungi such as the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea are unique in having two catalase/peroxidase (KatG) paralogues located either intracellularly (KatG1) or extracellularly (KatG2). The coding genes have recently been shown to derive from a lateral gene transfer from a (proteo)bacterial genome followed by gene duplication and diversification. Here we demonstrate that KatG1 is...

Pls1 tetraspanins were shown for some pathogenic fungi to be essential for appressorium-mediated penetration into their host plants. We show here that Podospora anserina, a saprobic fungus lacking appressorium, contains PaPls1, a gene orthologous to known PLS1 genes. Inactivation of PaPls1 demonstrates that this gene is specifically required for the germination of ascospores in P. anserina. The...

The population genetics of Magnaporthe grisea, the rice blast pathogen, were analyzed in a center of rice diversity (the Uttar Pradesh hills of the Indian Himalayas) using multilocus and single-, or low-copy, DNA markers. Based on DNA fingerprinting with the multilocus probe MGR586 and single-locus probes, 157 haplotypes clustered into 56 lineages (at >/=70% MGR586 band similarity, each with un...

Background: Populations of Magnaporthe, the causal agent of rice blast disease, are pathotypically and genetically diverse and therefore their interaction with different rice cultivars and also antagonistic microorganisms are very complicated. Objectives: The objectives of the present study were to characterize phylogenetic relationships of 114 native  Magnaporthe strains, isolated from rice a...

The fungus, Magnaporthe grisea (Rice blast fungus) is a major agricultural problem affecting rice and related food crops. The way that the fungus invades the host plant and propagates itself is a very important scientific problem and recent advances in research into the genetic basis of these processes can be used to build a simple partial model using hybrid computational modelling techniques. ...

Magnaporthe grisea is an ascomycete that is the causal agent of rice blast disease. The disease is one of the most destructive diseases of rice for the significant loss of the crop. The major strategies for defense against the disease are drugs and resistant cultivars, However, the fungus has been known to be highly variable with respects to drug resistance and host cultivar specificity, and th...