Editor's Summary

23 March 2006

Blast damage

Research on plant diseases in recent years has shown that bacterial pathogens use specialized secretion systems to deliver proteins directly into plant cells, where they suppress plant defences and facilitate tissue invasion. Now a similar system has been discovered in the fungal pathogen Magnaporthe grisea, the cause of rice blast disease. The fungus produces an ATPase that is essential for plant tissue colonization: the enzyme is one of a family of aminophospholipid translocases that appears to regulate membrane characteristics important to fungal pathogens, both for infection-related morphogenesis and for the efficient delivery of virulence-related proteins. Rice blast is a significant problem and control strategies are needed urgently, so the proteins involved in the infection process will be of interest as possible fungicide targets.

Letter: A P-type ATPase required for rice blast disease and induction of host resistance

Martin J. Gilbert, Christopher R. Thornton, Gavin E. Wakley and Nicholas J. Talbot

doi:10.1038/nature04567

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