Genome-wide functional analysis reveals that autophagy is necessary for growth, sporulation, deoxynivalenol production and virulence in Fusarium graminearum

Lv, Wuyun, Wang, Chunyan, Yang, Nan, Que, Yawei, Talbot, Nicholas J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6434-7757 and Wang, Zhengyi (2017) Genome-wide functional analysis reveals that autophagy is necessary for growth, sporulation, deoxynivalenol production and virulence in Fusarium graminearum. Scientific Reports, 7. ISSN 2045-2322

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Abstract

Autophagy is a conserved cellular recycling and trafficking pathway in eukaryotic cells and has been reported to be important in the virulence of a number of microbial pathogens. Here, we report genome-wide identification and characterization of autophagy-related genes (ATGs) in the wheat pathogenic fungus Fusarium graminearum. We identified twenty-eight genes associated with the regulation and operation of autophagy in F. graminearum. Using targeted gene deletion, we generated a set of 28 isogenic mutants. Autophagy mutants were classified into two groups by differences in their growth patterns. Radial growth of 18 Group 1 ATG mutants was significantly reduced compared to the wild-type strain PH-1, while 10 Group 2 mutants grew normally. Loss of any of the ATG genes, except FgATG17, prevented the fungus from causing Fusarium head blight disease. Moreover, subsets of autophagy genes were necessary for asexual/sexual differentiation and deoxynivalenol (DON) production, respectively. FgATG1 and FgATG5 were investigated in detail and showed severe defects in autophagy. Taken together, we conclude that autophagy plays a critical role in growth, asexual/sexual sporulation, deoxynivalenol production and virulence in F. graminearum.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: molecular-mechanisms,magnaporthe-oryzae,vegetative growth,aspergillus-oryzae,gibberella-zeae,self-digestion,head blight,cell-death,yeast,kinase
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > The Sainsbury Laboratory
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 15 Feb 2019 10:30
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 17:46
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/69936
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-11640-z

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