Chemical to control pesticide-resistant rice blast fungus

March 11, 2022

Exploring with RIKEN’s chemical array technology

Researchers at the RIKEN CSRS successfully created a compound effective against the pesticide-resistant rice blast fungus.

While various fungicides have been developed to control rice blast disease, the emergence of resistant variants poses a challenge to protecting against the disease. The melanin biosynthesis dehydratase inhibitor (MBI-D) among them had exhibited an excellent efficacy; however, it cannot be used anymore due to the appearance of the resistant variant. The MBI-D-resistant strain is known to be occurred by the V75M mutation, which is a valine-to-methionine substitution at position 75, in the rice blast fungus scytalone dehydratase (SDH1).

Using the chemical array technology developed by RIKEN, the researchers identified NPD13731, a compound that strongly inhibits the enzyme with a V75M mutation in SDH1. Then, they developed “melabiostin”, a chemical that can control MBI-D-resistant strain, by optimizing the structure of NPD13731. The findings will contribute to the control of rice blast infection, a profound disease around the world.

Original article

Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry doi:10.1021/acs.jafc.1c04984

T. Motoyama, Y. Kondoh, T. Shimizu, T. Hayashi, K. Honda, M. Uchida, H. Osada,

"Identification of Scytalone Dehydratase Inhibitors Effective against Melanin Biosynthesis Dehydratase Inhibitor-Resistant Pyricularia oryzae".

Contact

Takayuki Motoyama; Senior Research Scientist

Yasumitsu Kondoh; Senior Research Scientist

Takeshi Shimizu; Research Consultant

Hiroyuki Osada; Group Director

Chemical Biology Research Group