Muxing Liu, Fangfang Wang, Bo He, Jiexiong Hu, Ying Dai, Weizhong Chen, Mingxi Yi, Haifeng Zhang, Yonghao Ye, Zhongli Cui, Xiaobo Zheng, Ping Wang, Weiman Xing, Zhengguang Zhang
Effector proteins secreted by plant pathogenic fungi are important artilleries against host immunity, but there is no precedent of such effectors being explored as antifungal targets. Here we demonstrate that MoErs1, a species-specific effector protein secreted by the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, inhibits the function of rice papain-like cysteine protease OsRD21 involved in rice immunity. Disrupting MoErs1-OsRD21 interaction effectively controls rice blast. In addition, we show that FY21001, a structure-function-based designer compound, specifically binds to and inhibits MoErs1 function...
February 26, 2024: Nature Plants