Fig. 5: An effector gene encoding a positively-selected small secreted protein is involved in quantitative pathogenicity of Z. tritici.

a Regional association plot of a candidate effector protein detected on cultivar “Arina”. X and Y axes indicate positions on chromosome 3 and −log10 (p value) for associations with PLACP, respectively. Annotations on the reference genome are shown at the bottom with the candidate gene represented by a green box, other genes by blue boxes and transposable elements by gray boxes. A linkage disequilibrium plot is shown below the annotation bar. b log2-fold expression changes of Zt_3_00467 based on RNAseq data collected throughout the time course of Z. tritici infection on wheat. c Percentage of leaf area covered by pycnidia (PLACP) produced by the wild-type strain 3D7 (n = 6 leaves) and the ectopic transformants expressing the virulent (3D7) and avirulent (IPO10273) alleles (n = 18 leaves each). Data are presented as box plots (center line at the median, upper bound at 75th percentile, lower bound at 25th percentile) with whiskers chosen to show the 1.5 of the interquartile range. Significant difference between group means are represented with different letters above the boxplots after a Tukey’s HSD test. d Alignment of the virulent and avirulent protein sequences. Residues in yellow constitute the predicted signal peptide, gray residues show protein mutations and red asterisks show positively selected sites with a Bayes Empirical Bayes posterior probability >0.95.