Comparative transcriptomics of rice and exploitation of target genes for blast infection

Rice is a major cereal crop and serves as staple food for a large part of the human population. Rice blast is a very important disease that attacks rice and is found in every region where rice is grown. Here we identified differentially expressed genes during different time intervals of the blast infection. Our results show that at 24 hpi almost half of the identified genes (174 of 224) are under expressed, then at 36 hpi only 26 genes out of 278 identified genes were down regulated. Then for 2nd, 4th and 6th day mostly differentially expressed genes remained up regulated. Also, the most significant gene ontology terms identified for these genes were diterpenoid metabolic process, diterpene phytoalexin metabolic process and phytoalexin metabolic process, isoprenoid metabolic process, terpenoid metabolic process and lipid metabolic process. This study has led to a more comprehensive data for understanding rice defense response.