Identification and expression of genes involved in race-specific blast resistance in rice

In this study, differentially expression genes were isolated from a indica rice cultivar Zhong 156 with a race-specific blast resistance gene subjected to the avirulent race ZC15 and the virulent race ZB1 of Magnaporthe grisea at the seedling growth stage. Twenty-five cDNA clones were isolated by using suppression subtractive hybridization combined with reverse Northern blot and confirmed by RT-PCR. The categorization of the 25 cDNAs was performed according to the putative functions of their homologous genes in the database. RT-PCR comparisons of the compatible and incompatible interactions between rice and Magnaporthe grisea indicated that the expression levels, change trends and start times of 25 cDNA clones were differences. The expression patterns of these identified genes were differences at rice different developmental stages after infections with the different races of pathogen. Based on these results we concluded that expressions of some defense response genes might be regulated by both race infections of pathogen and developmental stages of the host plant, which may result in the race-specific and the development-specific resistance in rice.