Towards defining nutrient conditions encountered by the rice blast fungus during host infection.
Fungal diseases cause enormous crop losses, but defining the nutrient conditions encountered by the pathogen remains elusive. Here, we generated a mutant strain of the devastating rice pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae impaired for de novo methionine biosynthesis. The resulting methionine-requiring strain grew strongly on synthetic minimal media supplemented with methionine, aspartate or complex mixtures of partially digested proteins, but could not establish disease in rice leaves. Live-cell-imaging showed the mutant could produce normal appressoria and enter host cells but failed to develop, indicating the availability or accessibility of aspartate and methionine is limited in the plant. This is the first report to demonstrate the utility of combining biochemical genetics, plate growth tests and live-cell-imaging to indicate what nutrients might not be readily available to the fungal pathogen in rice host cells.
Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA. rwilson10@unl.edu
Richard A
RA
Wilson
Jessie
J
Fernandez
Cristian F
CF
Quispe
Julien
J
Gradnigo
Anya
A
Seng
Etsuko
E
Moriyama
Janet D
JD
Wright
D001224:Aspartic Acid / Q000378:metabolism; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000235:genetics; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D020082:Magnaporthe / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D008715:Methionine / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena / Q000502:physiology*; D030781:Organisms, Genetically Modified; D012275:Oryza / Q000382:microbiology*; D010802:Phylogeny
D017931:DNA Primers; D001224:Aspartic Acid; D008715:Methionine