THE RICE BLAST FUNGUS, MAGNAPORTHE ORYZAE CAUSES SPECIFIC DISRUPTION OF THE F-ACTIN CYTOSKELETON AND COMPROMISES CHLOROPLAST FUNCTION DURING RICE INFECTION.
G. LITTLEJOHN (1), X. Yan (2), M. Martin-Urdiroz (2), H. Saitoh (3), D. Sones (2), R. Terauchi (3), N. Talbot (2) (1) University of Exeter, United Kingdom; (2) University of Exeter, United Kingdom; (3) Iwate Biotechnology Research Centre, Japan

Rice blast is the most important fungal disease of rice and is caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, a hemibiotrophic ascomycete. The disease is ubiquitous in rice growing regions of the world, where it can devastate rice crop yields. Several outbreaks have led to greater than 50 % yield loss. There is therefore an urgent need to describe and characterise the cell biology of plant infection by the fungus in order to design novel anti-penetrant, and anti-invasive disease control strategies. We have produced a series of rice lines and fungal strains with sub-cellularly targeted, fluorescently labelled proteins. These resources, along with optimised live cell image acquisition and analysis are being used to chart the in planta progress of M. oryzae infections, quantitatively. We report that M. oryzae infections cause disruption of the F-actin cytoskeleton of rice epidermal cells, both in primary and secondarily invaded cells. We also show that invasive hyphae specifically associate with actin and endoplasmic reticulum at the biotrophic interfacial complex (BIC). We report the temporal and spatial dynamics of BIC formation and will show high resolution imaging of BIC formation and invasive hyphal progression in rice tissue. In addition, we demonstrate changes to chloroplast structure and function during infection and report the identification and functional characterisation of effectors that target the chloroplast during rice tissue colonisation.

Abstract Number: P9-279
Session Type: Poster