TY - JOUR T1 - The appressorium of <em>Magnaporthe oryzae</em> remains mitotically active during post-penetration hyphal growth in rice cells JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/077669 SP - 077669 AU - Kiersun Jones AU - Cory B. Jenkinson AU - Jie Zhu AU - Sara Dorhmi AU - Chang Hyun Khang Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/26/077669.abstract N2 - To investigate the mitotic dynamics of an appressorium, we used time-lapse confocal imaging of a fluorescence-based mitotic reporter strain of Magnaporthe oryzae. We present evidence that: (i) appressoria remain viable and mitotically active after host penetration, (ii) appressorial mitosis, like invasive hyphal mitosis, is semi-closed, (iii) sister chromatids separate within the appressorium, (iv) a mitotic appressorial nucleus undergoes extreme constriction and elongation as it migrates through the penetration peg in a manner analogous to mitosis during cell-to-cell movement of invasive hyphae. These results provide new insight into the potential roles of the appressorium after host penetration and highlight the unique mitotic dynamics during rice blast infection. ER -