Mohammadi Naser, Mehrabi Rahim, Mirzadi Gohari Amir, Roostaei Mozaffar, Mohammadi Goltapeh Ebrahim, Safaie Naser, Kema Gert H J
Dryland Agricultural Research Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (ARREO), Maragheh, Iran.
Department of Biotechnology, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran.
Front Microbiol. 2020 Aug 18;11:1976. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.01976. eCollection 2020.
is one of the most economically destructive wheat diseases all over the world and is a model fungal plant pathogen within the ascomycetes. In this study, the instrumental role of the gene encoding a MADS-box transcription factor (TF) in the infection process of was functionally characterized as these proteins play critical roles in the global gene regulation required for various developmental and physiological processes. Our infection assays showed that mutants were attenuated in disease development as a 30 and 90% reduction in chloro-necrotic lesions and pycnidia formation, respectively, were observed in plants inoculated with mutant strains demonstrating that is a crucial factor playing a significant role in the late stage of infection corresponding with pycnidial formation. Our expression analysis demonstrated that the transcript level of is induced at 2 and 20 days post-inoculation, coinciding with pycnidial sporulation. In addition, microscopic analyses showed that branch intensity and biomass production were significantly reduced, indicating that impaired pycnidia formation is a result of impaired differentiation and biomass production in the mutants. Furthermore, melanization, a phenomenon required for fruiting body formation, was significantly hampered in mutants as they were not melanized under all tested temperature and media conditions. Overall, our data showed that impaired disease development of the mutants is mainly due to the significant impact of in different cellular processes, including differentiation, branching, fungal biomass production, and melanization, in which identification of downstream genes are of interest to increase our understanding of this pathosystem.
是全球最具经济破坏力的小麦病害之一，也是子囊菌门中典型的真菌植物病原体。在本研究中，编码MADS盒转录因子（TF）的基因在感染过程中的作用得到了功能表征，因为这些蛋白质在各种发育和生理过程所需的全局基因调控中发挥着关键作用。我们的感染试验表明，突变体在病害发展中减弱，在用突变体菌株接种的植物中，分别观察到氯坏死病斑和分生孢子器形成减少了30%和90%，这表明在与分生孢子器形成相对应的感染后期起着关键作用。我们的表达分析表明，在接种后2天和20天诱导的转录水平，与分生孢子器产孢一致。此外，显微镜分析表明，分支强度和生物量产量显著降低，这表明突变体中分生孢子器形成受损是分化和生物量产量受损的结果。此外，子实体形成所需的黑色素化在突变体中受到显著阻碍，因为它们在所有测试的温度和培养基条件下都没有黑色素化。总体而言，我们的数据表明，突变体病害发展受损主要是由于在不同细胞过程中的显著影响，包括分化、分支、真菌生物量生产和黑色素化，其中鉴定下游基因有助于增进我们对这个病理系统的理解。
