Non-host resistance (NHR) is the resistance of plants to a plethora of non-adapted pathogens and is considered as one of the most robust resistance mechanisms of plants. Studies have shown that the efficiency of resistance in general and NHR in particular could vary in different plant organs, thus pointing to tissue-specific determinants. This was exemplified by research on host and non-host in...

Exogenous application of the protein elicitors MoHrip1 and MoHrip2, which were isolated from the pathogenic fungus Magnaporthe oryzae (M. oryzae), was previously shown to induce a hypersensitive response in tobacco and to enhance resistance to rice blast. In this work, we successfully transformed rice with the mohrip1 and mohrip2 genes separately. The MoHrip1 and MoHrip2 transgenic rice plants ...

The aim of this study is a functional characterization of 10 putative histidine kinases (HIKs)-encoding genes in the phytopathogenic fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. Two HIKs were found to be required for pathogenicity in the fungus. It was found that the mutant strains ΔMohik5 and ΔMohik8 show abnormal conidial morphology and furthermore ΔMohik5 is unable to form appressoria. Both HIKs MoHik5p and M...

The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is a model for studying fungal-plant interactions. Although it produces two types of spores (microconidia and macroconidia), previous infection studies have exclusively dealt with macroconidia. Germination of microconidia has not been reported, and their role in plant infection is not defined. Here we show that approximately 10% of microconidia germinate...

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. ...

Equol, a metabolite of soybean isoflavone daidzein, has been proven to have various bioactivities related to human health, but little is known on its antifungal activity to plant fungal pathogens. Magnaporthe oryzae is a phytopathogenic fungus that causes rice blast, a devastating disease on rice. Here, we demonstrated that equol influences the development and pathogenicity of M. oryzae. Equol ...

The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is a serious pathogen that jeopardises the world's most important food-security crop. Ten common Malaysian rice varieties were examined for their morphological, physiological and genomic responses to this rice blast pathogen. qPCR quantification was used to assess the growth of the pathogen population in resistant and susceptible rice varieties. The chlo...

BACKGROUND Rgs1, a prototypical Regulator of G protein Signaling, negatively modulates the cyclic AMP pathway thereby influencing various aspects of asexual development and pathogenesis in the rice-blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. Rgs1 possesses tandem DEP motifs (termed DEP-A and DEP-B; for Dishevelled, Egl-10, Pleckstrin) at the N-terminus, and a Gα-GTP interacting RGS catalytic core domain a...

The rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, is a model plant pathogenic fungus and is a severe threat to global rice production. Over the past two decades, it has been found that the peroxisomes play indispensable roles during M. oryzae infection. Given the importance of the peroxisomes for virulence, we review recent advances of the peroxisomes roles during M. oryzae infection processes. We fir...