The Conserved Effector UvHrip1 interacts with OsHGW, and Infection of Regulates Defense- and Heading Date-Related Signaling Pathway.

, which causes rice false smut (RFS), is one of the most detrimental rice fungal diseases and poses a severe threat to rice production and quality. Effectors in often act as a group of essential virulence factors that play crucial roles in the interaction between host and the pathogen. Thus, the functions of individual effectors in need to be further explored. Here, we demonstrated a small secreted hypersensitive response-inducing protein (hrip), named UvHrip1, which was highly conserved in isolates. UvHrip1 was also proven to suppress necrosis-like defense symptoms in induced by the oomycete elicitor INF1. The localization of UvHrip1 was mainly in the nuclei and cytoplasm via monitoring the UvHrip1-GFP fusion protein in rice cells. Furthermore, Y2H and BiFC assay demonstrated that UvHrip1 interacted with OsHGW, which is a critical regulator in heading date and grain weight signaling pathways in rice. Expression patterns of defense- and heading date-related genes, and , were down-regulated over infection in rice. Collectively, our data provide a theory for gaining an insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying the UvHrip1 virulence function.