Function and evolution of Magnaporthe oryzae avirulence gene AvrPib responding to the rice blast resistance gene Pib

Magnaporthe oryzae (Mo) is the causative pathogen of the damaging disease rice blast. The effector gene AvrPib, which confers avirulence to host carrying resistance gene Pib, was isolated via map-based cloning. The gene encodes a 75-residue protein, which includes a signal peptide. Phenotyping and genotyping of 60 isolates from each of five geographically distinct Mo populations revealed that the frequency of virulent isolates, as well as the sequence diversity within the AvrPib gene increased from a low level in the far northeastern region of China to a much higher one in the southern region, indicating a process of host-driven selection. Resequencing of the AvrPiballele harbored by a set of 108 diverse isolates revealed that there were four pathoways, transposable element (TE) insertion (frequency 81.7%), segmental deletion (11.1%), complete absence (6.7%), and point mutation (0.6%), leading to loss of the avirulence function. The lack of any TE insertion in a sample of non-rice infecting Moisolates suggested that it occurred after the host specialization of Mo. Both the deletions and the functional point mutation were confined to the signal peptide. The reconstruction of 16 alleles confirmed seven functional nucleotide polymorphisms for the AvrPiballeles, which generated three distinct expression profiles.