Identification of pathogenicity related small secreted proteins from Magnaporthe oryzae by comparison of predicted proteome with nonpathogenic relative, Neurospora crassa

Small Secreted Proteins (SSPs) of plant pathogenic fungi are structurally and physicochemically diverse class of biomolecules with diversified biological functions. Broadly, they belong to the class of effector proteins which help the pathogen to breach or dodge the innate immunity of the host. Absence of evolutionarily conserved sequence motifs limits their identification by simple scanning of protein sequences. Nevertheless, there are some signature elements (in terms of amino acid compositional bias) which can be exploited to identify the SSPs, computationally. Here, we made an attempt to identify SSPs related to pathogenicity computationally. We utilized the whole genome sequence of Magnaporthe oryze to predict its total proteome and then compared it with the proteome of its closest nonpathogenic relative Neurospora crassa. Finally, we narrowed down to a set of 295 SSPs which are distributed among all the chromosomes of M. oryzae, showing a patchy distribution in phylogenetic tree and containing typical signatures associated with pathogenecity related effectors and are expressed during host infection. We believe, many of these SSPs play crucial roles in pathogenicity, which are yet unknown, but will be gradually unfolded in near future.