In this paper, a plate confrontation method was used to isolate bacteria antagonistic to the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea from samples collected from China's Dalian Bay. The antagonist strain LM-031 was obtained. We studied this strain's morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics and analyzed its 16S rDNA sequence. We compared the effects of different culture condition...

Existing theory, empirical, clinical and field research all predict that reducing the virulence of individuals within a pathogen population will reduce the overall virulence, rendering disease less severe. Here, we show that this seemingly successful disease management strategy can fail with devastating consequences for infected hosts. We deploy cooperation theory and a novel synthetic system i...

Understanding how fungi specialize on their plant host is crucial for developing sustainable disease control. A traditional, centuries-old rice agro-system of the Yuanyang terraces was used as a model to show that virulence effectors of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzaeh play a key role in its specialization on locally grown indica or japonica local rice subspecies. Our results have indi...

Plants respond to pathogen attack via a rapid burst of reactive oxygen species (ROS). However, ROS are also produced by fungal metabolism and are required for the development of infection structures in Magnaporthe oryzae. To obtain a better understanding of redox regulation in M. oryzae, we measured the amount and redox potential of glutathione (E(GSH)), as the major cytoplasmic anti-oxidant, t...

Cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) domain containing proteins (CDCPs) constitute a big family in plants and some members in this family have been implicated in a variety of biological processes, but the precise functions and the underlying mechanism of the majority of this family in plant immunity remain to be elucidated. In the present study, a CBS domain containing protein gene, OsCBSX3, is funct...

Histone methylation plays important roles in regulating chromatin dynamics and transcription in eukaryotes. Implication of histone modifications in fungal pathogenesis is, however, beginning to emerge. Here, we report identification and functional analysis of a putative JmjC-domain-containing histone demethylase in Magnaporthe oryzae. Through bioinformatics analysis, we identified seven genes, ...

ALD1 (ABERRANT GROWTH AND DEATH2 [AGD2]-LIKE DEFENSE1) is one of the key defense regulators in Arabidopsis thaliana and Nicotiana benthamiana. In these model plants, ALD1 is responsible for triggering basal defense response and systemic resistance against bacterial infection. As well ALD1 is involved in the production of pipecolic acid and an unidentified compound(s) for systemic resistance and...

The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae grows inside living host cells. Cytological analyses by live-cell imaging have revealed characteristics of the biotrophic invasion, particularly the extrainvasive hyphal membrane (EIHM) originating from the host plasma membrane and a host membrane-rich structure, biotrophic interfacial complex (BIC). Here, we observed rice subcellular changes associated ...

Magnaporthe oryzae, the ascomycete fungus that causes rice blast disease, initiates conidiation in response to light when grown on Prune-Agar medium containing both carbon and nitrogen sources. Macroautophagy/autophagy was shown to be essential for M. oryzae conidiation and induced specifically upon exposure to light but is undetectable in the dark. Therefore, it is inferred that autophagy is n...

The ankyrin repeat-containing protein gene OsPIANK1 (AK068021) in rice (Oryza sativa L.) was previously shown to be upregulated following infection with the rice leaf blight pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzae (Xoo). In this study, we further characterized the role of OsPIANK1 in basal defense against Magnaporthe oryzae (M.oryzae) by 5' deletion analysis of its promoter and overexpression of ...