Genome-wide analysis rice transcriptional change during the early stages of false smut formation caused by Ustilaginoidea virens [set A]

Rice false smut is a common fungal disease caused by Ustilaginoidea virens. As it only scatter occured in panicle at florescence, little information is known about this crop disease. Here, we injected suspension spores into a susceptible indica rice cultivar 9311 booting panicle (infected water as mock) and divided the early disease symptom into 3 uninterrupted stages(S) at 6 day post inoculation (dpi): the infected pistil became expand (S1), the hyphae began to infect the bottom of anthers (S2) and the hyphae growth went on and surrounded the floral organ forming a floral-hyphae complex (S3). To gain insight into rice putatively differential responses to U. virens, all 3 infected and mock spikes with same spike length were collected and analyzed by Solexa/Illuminaâ??s digital gene expression (DGE) system, BGI. Our results contribute to the knowledge of understanding rice molecular mechanism in response to U. virens infection. Overall design: Four samples including one control (CK) and three infected (S1, S2, S3) were analyzed