Effector evolution during arm race between Soybean and Phytophthora
S. DONG (1) (1) Department of Plant Pathology, Nanjing Agricultural University, China

Phytophthora species infect thousands of plants, causing huge economic lose and environmental disaster. The interaction between soybean root disease pathogen (P. sojae) and soybean (Glycine max) follows gene-for-gene hypothesis, therefore, studying how avirulence (AVR) effectors co-evolve with host resistant proteins is required for better understanding plant-microbe interaction, and is eventually beneficial to plant breeding. Several AVR effector genes have been identified so far. It is shown that AVR effector genes are silenced or entirely removed in natural virulent isolates. In other cases, AVR effector gene expressed in all the examined isolates evolve different alleles to avoid host defense. However, the mechanism why AVR sequence polymorphism results in successful evading host protein recognition remain unknown. To address this question, we combined biochemical and genetics approaches to identify P. sojae AVR interactors and explore their roles in arm race between soybean and Phytophthora.

Abstract Number: C8-2
Session Type: Concurrent