Identifying unique and overlapping roles of reactive oxygen species in rice blast and Southern corn leaf blight

Plants and their fungal pathogens both produce reactive oxygen species (ROS). CytotoxicROS act both as stressors and signals in the plant-fungal interaction. In biotrophs, a compatible interaction generates little ROS, but is followed by disease. An incompatible interaction results in a strong oxidative burst by the host, limiting infection. Necrotrophs, in contrast, thrive on dead and dying cells in an oxidant-rich local environment. Rice blast, Magnaportheoryzae, a hemibiotroph, occurs worldwide on rice and related hosts and can decimate enough rice each year to feed sixty million people. Cochliobolusheterostrophus, a necrotroph, causes Southern corn leaf blight (SLB), responsible for a major epidemic in the 1970s. The objectives of our study of ROS signaling and response in these two cereal pathogens were: Confocal imaging of ROS production using genetically encoded redox sensor in two pathosystems over time. Forward genetic screening of HyPer sensor lines in two pathosystems for fungal genes involved in altered ROSphenotypes. RNA-seq for discovery of genes involved in ROS-related stress and signaling in two pathosystems. Revisions to the research plan: Library construction in SLB was limited by low transformation efficiency, compounded by a protoplasting enzyme being unavailable during most of year 3. Thus Objective 2 for SLB re-focused to construction of sensor lines carrying deletion mutations in known or candidate genes involved in ROS response. Imaging on rice proved extremely challenging, so mutant screening and imaging were done with a barley-infecting line, already from the first year. In this project, ROS imaging at unprecedented time and spatial resolution was achieved, using genetically-encoded ratio sensors in both pathogens. This technology is currently in use for a large library of rice blast mutants in the ROS sensor background, and Southern corn leaf blight mutants in final stages of construction. The imaging methods developed here to follow the redox state of plant pathogens in the host tissue should be applicable to fungal pathogens in general. Upon completion of mutant construction for SCLB we hope to achieve our goal of comparison between intracellular ROS status and response in hemibiotroph and necrotroph cereal pathogens.