Blast disease of rice plant is caused by Magnaporthe oryzae (anamorph Pyricularia oryzae). This disease is recognized to be one of the most serious diseases of rice crop around the world. A total of 72 monoconidial isolates of M. oryzae obtained from blast disease samples collected around Southern Karnataka were characterized using internal transcribed spacers of the ribosomal DNA sequences. These were analyzed by comparing with already deposited sequences in GenBank database. It helped in diagnosing the invasive pathogen in all locations. Variability of rDNA sequences was found to be highly polymorphic with 0.068962 nucleotide diversity showing 6 distinct clades. 33 haplotype groups were identified with haplotype diversity of 0.8881 and Tajima's neutrality test with a D value of −1.96827 with P < 0.05 showing the presence of variations among the sequences of pathogen isolates. The Tajima’s D value of less than one indicates the presence of a high number of rare alleles. Our study indicates that the pathogen might have undergone recent selection pressure because of the exposure to a large number of cultivars resulting in the evolution of rare alleles. This shows the importance of characterizing internal transcribed spacer (ITS) to know pathogen diversity and its fitness which has potential to contribute to the field of breeding for blast disease resistance.

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Background Nucleotide-binding site-leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) resistance genes are the largest class of plant resistance genes which play an important role in the plant defense response. These genes are better conserved than others and function as a recognition-based immune system in plants through their encoded proteins. Results Here, we report the effect of Magnaporthe oryzae, the rice blast pathogen inoculation in resistant BR2655 and susceptible HR12 rice cultivars. Transcriptomic profiling was carried out to analyze differential gene expression in these two cultivars. A total of eight NBS-LRR uncharacterized resistance proteins (RP1, RP2, RP3, RP4, RP5, RP6, RP7, and RP8) were selected in these two cultivars for in silico modeling. Modeller 9.22 and SWISS-MODEL servers were used for the homology modeling of eight RPs. ProFunc server was utilized for the prediction of secondary structure and function. The CDvist Web server and Interpro scan server detected the motif and domains in eight RPs. Ramachandran plot of eight RPs confirmed that the modeled structures occupied favorable positions. Conclusions From the present study, computational analysis of these eight RPs may afford insights into their role, function, and valuable resource for studying the intricate details of the plant defense mechanism. Furthermore, the identification of resistance proteins is useful for the development of molecular markers linked to resistance genes.