Histone Methylation Is Required for Virulence, Conidiation, and Multi-Stress Resistance of .

Histone methylation, which is critical for transcriptional regulation and various biological processes in eukaryotes, is a reversible dynamic process regulated by histone methyltransferases (HMTs) and histone demethylases (HDMs). This study determined the function of 5 HMTs (, , , , and ) and 1 HDMs () in the phytopathogenic fungus by analyzing targeted gene deletion mutants. The vegetative growth, conidiation, and pathogenicity of ∆ and ∆ were severely inhibited indicating that and play critical roles in cell development in . Multiple stresses analysis revealed that both and were involved in the adaptation to cell wall interference agents and osmotic stress. Meanwhile, ∆ and ∆ displayed serious vegetative growth defects in sole carbon source medium, indicating that and play an important role in carbon source utilization. In addition, ∆ colony displayed white in color, while the wild-type colony was dark brown, indicating is an essential gene for melanin biosynthesis in . was required for the resistance to oxidative stress. On the other hand, all of ∆, ∆, and ∆ mutants displayed wild-type phenotype in vegetative growth, multi-stress resistance, pathogenicity, carbon source utilization, and melanin biosynthesis. To explore the regulatory mechanism of and , RNA-seq of these mutants and wild-type strain was performed. Phenotypes mentioned above correlated well with the differentially expressed genes in ∆ and ∆ according to the KEGG and GO enrichment results. Overall, our study provides genetic evidence that defines the central role of HMTs and HDMs in the pathological and biological functions of .