Canada & USA: Pathogenesis of Phytophthora sojae on soybean

Stable predictive markers for Phytophthora sojae avirulence genes that impair infection of soybean uncovered by whole genome sequencing of 31 isolates

Geneviève Arsenault-Labrecque, Humira Sonah, Amandine Lebreton, Caroline Labbé, Geneviève Marchand, Allen Xue, François Belzile, Brian J. Knaus, Niklaus J. Grünwald and Richard R. Bélanger | Département de Phytologie, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Harrow, ON, Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ontario, ON, Canada, Horticultural Crops Research Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Corvallis, OR, USA | 2018 | BMS Biology | 16:80 | doi: 10.1186/s12915-018-0549-9

The hemibiotroph, Phytophthora sojae, causes root and stem rot in soybean by gene-for-gene relationship between resistance genes in soybean and their matching virulence genes in the pathogen. The pathogen can avoid detection by the soybean genes by various mutations or change in expression in their Avr genes that encode for small effector proteins (i.e. RXLR and DEER amino acid motifs). In this study Avr genes were analysed for expression by RT-qPCR, using MIC Real Time Cycler, to further understand the gene-for-gene interactions.  The results showed that genomic signatures alone accurately predict 99.5% of the interactions and can be used as accurate predictors of phenotypes for compatibility with genes in soybean.