Elucidation of the mechanisme of specific recognition between rice and rice blast

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Between pathogen and host, attack and counter-attack impose strong reciprocal selection on the involved organisms, leading to the development of arms race evolutionary dynamics. Here we show that Magnaporthe oryzae avirulence gene AVR-Pik and cognate rice resistance (R-) gene Pik are highly variable with multiple alleles differing by DNA replacements causing amino acid changes. There is a tight recognition specificity of AVR-Pik alleles by different Pik alleles. We found that AVR-Pik physically binds the N-terminal coiled-coil (CC) domain of Pik in yeast 2-hybrid assay as well as in in-planta co-immunoprecipitation assay. This binding specificity correlates the recognition specificity between AVR and R-genes. We propose that AVR-Pik and Pik are locked up in arms race co-evolution that is driven by their direct physical interactions.