State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology and Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, China.
Evol Bioinform Online. 2012;8:105-17. doi: 10.4137/EBO.S8486. Epub 2012 Jan 11.
The ascomycete Botrytis cinerea is a phytopathogenic fungus infecting and causing significant yield losses in a number of crops. The genome of B. cinerea has been fully sequenced while the importance of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) to extend the host range in plant pathogenic fungi has been recently appreciated. However, recent data confirm that the B. cinerea fungus shares conserved virulence factors with other fungal plant pathogens with narrow host range. Therefore, interkingdom HGT may contribute to the evolution of phytopathogenicity in B. cinerea. In this study, a stringent genome comparison pipeline was used to identify potential genes that have been obtained by B. cinerea but not by other fungi through interkingdom HGT. This search led to the identification of four genes: a UDP-glucosyltransferase (UGT), a lipoprotein and two alpha/beta hydrolase fold proteins. Phylogenetic analysis of the four genes suggests that B. cinerea acquired UGT from plants and the other 3 genes from bacteria. Based on the known gene functions and literature searching, a correlation between gene acquision and the evolution of pathogenicity in B. cinerea can be postulated.
有壳丝状真菌 Botrytis cinerea 是一种植物病原真菌，可感染多种作物并导致其产量显著下降。B. cinerea 的基因组已被完全测序，而水平基因转移（HGT）对扩展植物病原真菌的宿主范围的重要性最近也得到了认可。然而，最近的数据证实，B. cinerea 真菌与其他宿主范围狭窄的真菌植物病原体共享保守的毒力因子。因此，种间 HGT 可能有助于 B. cinerea 植物致病性的进化。在这项研究中，使用了严格的基因组比较管道来识别 B. cinerea 通过种间 HGT 获得但其他真菌没有获得的潜在基因。这一搜索导致了四个基因的鉴定：一个 UDP-葡萄糖基转移酶（UGT）、一个脂蛋白和两个 alpha/beta 水解酶折叠蛋白。这四个基因的系统发育分析表明，B. cinerea 从植物中获得了 UGT，而另外 3 个基因则来自细菌。根据已知的基因功能和文献检索，可以推测基因的获得与 B. cinerea 致病性的进化之间存在相关性。
