BLAST group

Evolutionary biology of blast and other fungal pathogens of rice, cereals and other plants

Missions

To provide fundamental knowledge on the biology, evolution and adaptation of fungal pathogens. This knowledge is essential for detecting emergent pathogen populations, monitoring epidemics, preventing emergences and adaptations, and designing new control strategies.

General objectives

We aim to understand how genomes and molecular determinants of pathogenicity evolve in plant pathogenic fungal populations.

To do so, we characterize the forces and trace the evolutionary histories that govern the adaptation of fungal populations to host and to the entire environment, with a particular focus on the ability to adapt to a new host species (host jumps) and on the ability to overcome plant resistances. We also characterize the genomic bases of these adaptations using innovative and powerful approaches (genome scans to detect molecular signatures of selection, genome-wide associations studies) to identify the key genes and loci involved in the interactions between plant pathogenic fungi and their hosts. We use molecular evolution to understand how these loci evolve and co-evolve with their plant targets in natural populations analyzed at different time and space scales (historical samples, contemporary populations). Finally, we study the impact of co-evolution between pathogen and host on the organization of the genomes of both protagonists.

Our main model is the ascomycete fungus Pyricularia oyzae, the causal agent of blast on rice and other cereals. The team is also studying other fungal pathogens causing diseases on rice and barley (especially the species complexes causing brown spot disease on rice and net blotches on barley), and other plants.

We also study the determinants of fungal immunity and their evolution. The aim is to better understand how fungi resist to their own pathogens (e.g. antagonistic bacteria and mycophages) in order to imagine new biological control methods based on these types of interactions.

Research discipline

The general theme is the study of proximal and ultimate mechanisms and processes that drive the adaptation of pathogens to their biotic and abiotic environment, and to understand co-evolution between pathogens and their hosts.

The core disciplines are evolutionary biology, evolutionary and population genomics, and molecular evolution.

Scale of study

Populations at different spatial scales (field / production basin / country / continent / world).

Publications