Department of Biointeractions and Crop Protection, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, AL5 2JQ, UK.
Department of Biointeractions and Crop Protection, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, AL5 2JQ, UK.
Fungal Biol. 2020 Sep;124(9):753-765. doi: 10.1016/j.funbio.2020.05.001. Epub 2020 Jun 16.
The cereal infecting fungus Fusarium graminearum is predicted to possess a single homologue of plant RALF (rapid alkalinisation factor) peptides. Fusarium mutant strains lacking FgRALF were generated and found to exhibit wildtype virulence on wheat and Arabidopsis floral tissue. Arabidopsis lines constitutively overexpressing FgRALF exhibited no obvious change in susceptibility to F. graminearum leaf infection. In contrast transient virus-mediated over-expression (VOX) of FgRALF in wheat prior to F. graminearum infection, slightly increased the rate of fungal colonisation of floral tissue. Ten putative Feronia (FER) receptors of RALF peptide were identified bioinformatically in hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum). Transient silencing of two wheat FER homoeologous genes prior to F. graminearum inoculation did not alter the subsequent interaction outcome. Collectively, our VOX results show that the fungal RALF peptide may be a minor contributor in F. graminearum virulence but results from fungal gene deletion experiments indicate potential functional redundancy within the F. graminearum genome. We demonstrate that virus-mediated over-expression is a useful tool to provide novel information about gene/protein function when results from gene deletion/disruption experimentation were uninformative.
侵染谷物的真菌禾谷镰刀菌( Fusarium graminearum )预计拥有一个单一的植物 RALF(快速碱化因子)肽同源物。生成了缺乏 FgRALF 的禾谷镰刀菌突变株,并发现其在小麦和拟南芥花组织上表现出野生型毒力。拟南芥株系组成性过表达 FgRALF ,对禾谷镰刀菌叶片感染的敏感性没有明显变化。相比之下,在禾谷镰刀菌感染之前,通过瞬时病毒介导的过表达(VOX)在小麦中过表达 FgRALF ,略微增加了真菌对花组织定殖的速度。通过生物信息学在六倍体小麦( Triticum aestivum )中鉴定了十个推定的 Feronia(FER) RALF 肽受体。在接种禾谷镰刀菌之前,瞬时沉默两个小麦 FER 同源基因并没有改变随后的相互作用结果。总的来说,我们的 VOX 结果表明,真菌 RALF 肽可能是禾谷镰刀菌毒力的一个次要贡献者,但真菌基因缺失实验的结果表明禾谷镰刀菌基因组内存在潜在的功能冗余。我们证明,病毒介导的过表达是一种有用的工具,可以在基因缺失/破坏实验结果无信息时提供关于基因/蛋白质功能的新信息。