Rice blast, caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae , is one of the most devastating diseases of rice. To understand the molecular basis of Pi5 -mediated resistance to M. oryzae , we cloned the resistance ( R ) gene at this locus using a map-based cloning strategy. Genetic and phenotypic analyses of 2014 F 2 progeny from a mapping population derived from a cross between IR50 , a susceptible rice cultivar, and the RIL260 line carrying Pi5 enabled us to narrow down the Pi5 locus to a 130-kb interval. Sequence analysis of this genomic region identified two candidate genes, Pi5-1 and Pi5-2 , which encode proteins carrying three motifs characteristic of R genes: an N-terminal coiled-coil (CC) motif, a nucleotide-binding (NB) domain, and a leucine-rich repeat (LRR) motif. In genetic transformation experiments of a susceptible rice cultivar, neither the Pi5-1 nor the Pi5-2 gene was found to confer resistance to M. oryzae . In contrast, transgenic rice plants expressing both of these genes, generated by crossing transgenic lines carrying each gene individually, conferred Pi5 -mediated resistance to M. oryzae . Gene expression analysis revealed that Pi5-1 transcripts accumulate after pathogen challenge, whereas the Pi5-2 gene is constitutively expressed. These results indicate that the presence of these two genes is required for rice Pi5 -mediated resistance to M. oryzae . Footnotes Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under accession nos. EU869185 and EU869186 . ↵ 1 These authors equally contributed to this work. Communicating editor: A. H. P aterson Received December 8, 2008. Accepted January 13, 2009. Copyright © 2009 by the Genetics Society of America
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