Rice Blast

Magnaporthe grisea, also known as rice blast fungus, rice rotten neck, rice seedling blight, blast of rice, oval leaf spot of graminea, pitting disease, ryegrass blast, and Johnson spot, is a plant-pathogenic fungus that causes a serious disease affecting rice.

Rice blast threatens global food security, destroying enough rice each year to feed 60 million people. It spreads within rice plants by invasive hyphae (branching filaments) which break through from cell to cell. In their bid to understand this process, the researchers used chemical genetics to mutate a signalling protein to make it susceptible to a specific drug.

The protein, PMK1, is responsible for suppressing the rice’s immunity and allowing the fungus to squeeze through pit fields – so, by inhibiting it, the researchers were able to trap the fungus within a cell. This level of precision led the team to discover that just one enzyme, called a MAP kinase, was responsible for regulating the invasive growth of rice blast.

The research team hopes this discovery will enable them to identify targets of this enzyme and thereby determine the molecular basis of this devastating disease.