Current Status and Future Perspectives of Genomics Research in the Rust Fungi

Abstract

Rust fungi in Pucciniales have caused destructive plant epidemics, have become more aggressive with new virulence, rapidly adapt to new environments, and continually threaten global agriculture. With the rapid advancement of genome sequencing technologies and data analysis tools, genomics research on many of the devastating rust fungi has generated unprecedented insights into various aspects of rust biology. In this review, we first present a summary of the main findings in the genomics of rust fungi related to variations in genome size and gene composition between and within species. Then we show how the genomics of rust fungi has promoted our understanding of the pathogen virulence and population dynamics. Even with great progress, many questions still need to be answered. Therefore, we introduce important perspectives with emphasis on the genome evolution and host adaptation of rust fungi. We believe that the comparative genomics and population genomics of rust fungi will provide a further understanding of the rapid evolution of virulence and will contribute to monitoring the population dynamics for disease management.

High-throughput RNA sequencing reveals differences between the transcriptomes of the five spore forms of Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici, the wheat stripe rust pathogen

“…The genomic and transcriptomic analyses provide opportunities to accelerate our understanding the biology of the rust fungi, for example the identification of virulence-related genes and their expression patterns during the wheat- Pst interactions (Cantu et al 2013 ; Xia et al 2017 , 2022 , 2020 ; Tian et al 2016 , 2017 ; Wang et al 2018 ; Peng et al 2021 ). But most of the studies have primarily focused on the uredinial stage, encompassing urediniospores, infectious hyphae, and haustoria within host plant tissue (Ling et al 2007 ; Yin et al 2009 ; Huang et al 2011 ; Zheng et al 2013 ; Xia et al 2018a , 2018b ).…”