Poster
Sergio M. Latorre
University College London
LONDON, England, United Kingdom
Yu Sugihara
Postdoctoral scientist
The Sainsbury Laboratory
NORWICH, England, United Kingdom
Adeline Harant
Senior Research Assistant
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Wagner Calegari Fagundes
Postdoc
Max-Planck Institute for Biology
Tübingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Vincent Were
Postdoctoral scientist
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Angus Malmgren
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Neha Sahu
Postdoctoral scientist
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Thorsten Langner
Group Leader
Max Planck Institute for Biology
Tübingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Soichiro Asuke
Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Kobe University
Kobe, JAPAN
Ryohei Terauchi, PhD
Professor
Kyoto University
Muko, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan
Nicholas J. Talbot
Group Leader
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Joe Win
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Hernán A. Burbano
University College London
London, England, United Kingdom
Sophien Kamoun
Group leader
The Sainsbury Laboratory
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
The fungus Magnaporthe (syn. Pyricularia) oryzae, the causal agent of rice blast disease, poses a major threat to rice production, endangering food security. Population genetic analysis reveals a genetically diverse population of M. oryzae, primarily concentrated in Southeast Asia, alongside three pandemic clonal lineages that, despite reduced genetic diversity, remain highly pathogenic. We have previously shown that these lineages differ in the presence and absence of candidate effector genes, which encode secreted proteins that modulate plant defenses and facilitate colonization. These patterns may reflect lineage-specific adaptations, especially in clonal lineages where genetic variation is low. To conduct an unbiased analysis of gene presence and absencein the context of M. oryzae's population history and adaptation, we generated the first pangenome of the rice blast fungus. The dataset consists of 61 Nanopore-sequenced de novo assembled genomes representing global genetic diversity. Pairwise comparisons reveal up to ~8 Mb differences in genome size (median ~45 Mb) and up to 2K differences in gene number (median ~12.5K), with a positive correlation between the two. Rarefaction curves show near saturation in the number of orthologous groups, suggesting a 'closed' pangenome. We present initial analysis exploring gene co-occurrence and avoidance patterns, as well as the timing and rates of gene gain and loss, for effector genes and other functional categories.