Abstract

Delineating species and epidemic lineages in fungal plant pathogens is critical to our understanding of disease emergence and the structure of fungal biodiversity and also informs international regulatory decisions. Pyricularia oryzae (syn. Magnaporthe oryzae) is a multihost pathogen that infects multiple grasses and cereals, is responsible for the most damaging rice disease (rice blast), and is of growing concern due to the recent introduction of wheat blast to Bangladesh from South America. However, the genetic structure and evolutionary history of M. oryzae, including the possible existence of cryptic phylogenetic species, remain poorly defined. Here, we use whole-genome sequence information for 76 M. oryzae isolates sampled from 12 grass and cereal genera to infer the population structure of M. oryzae and to reassess the species status of wheat-infecting populations of the fungus. Species recognition based on genealogical concordance, using published data or extracting previously used loci from genome assemblies, failed to confirm a prior assignment of wheat blast isolates to a new species (Pyricularia graminis-tritici). Inference of population subdivisions revealed multiple divergent lineages within M. oryzae, each preferentially associated with one host genus, suggesting incipient speciation following host shift or host range expansion. Analyses of gene flow, taking into account the possibility of incomplete lineage sorting, revealed that genetic exchanges have contributed to the makeup of multiple lineages within M. oryzae. These findings provide greater understanding of the ecoevolutionary factors that underlie the diversification of M. oryzae and highlight the practicality of genomic data for epidemiological surveillance in this important multihost pathogen.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-27-2018

Notes/Citation Information

Published in mBio, v. 9, issue 1, e01219-17, p. 1-19.

This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Foreign copyrights may apply.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01219-17

Funding Information

Support by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive grant no. 2013-68004-20378 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture is acknowledged.

Related Content

This is contribution no. 18-005-J from the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station and contribution number 17-12-107 from the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01219-17.

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