Comparative Pathogenomics Reveals Horizontally Acquired Novel Virulence Genes in Fungi Infecting Cereal Hosts

PLoS Pathogens

Mhairi Marshall¹  Donald M. Gardiner¹  Sukumar Chakraborty¹  Bruce A. McDonald¹  Lorenzo Covarelli¹  Peter S. Solomon²  Megan C. McDonald³  John M. Manners³  Kemal Kazan⁴  Anca G. Rusu⁵ 

[1] Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Plant Industry, Queensland Bioscience Precinct, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia;Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie e Ambientali, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Perugia, Forgo XX Giugno, Perugia, Italy;Plant Pathology, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland;Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia;Research School of Biology, College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

关键词: Fungal genomics;    Plant fungal pathogens;    Comparative genomics;    Fungal pathogens;    Fusarium;    Fungal genetics;    Wheat;    Plant bacterial pathogens;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.ppat.1002952

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Comparative analyses of pathogen genomes provide new insights into how pathogens have evolved common and divergent virulence strategies to invade related plant species. Fusarium crown and root rots are important diseases of wheat and barley world-wide. In Australia, these diseases are primarily caused by the fungal pathogen Fusarium pseudograminearum. Comparative genomic analyses showed that the F. pseudograminearum genome encodes proteins that are present in other fungal pathogens of cereals but absent in non-cereal pathogens. In some cases, these cereal pathogen specific genes were also found in bacteria associated with plants. Phylogenetic analysis of selected F. pseudograminearum genes supported the hypothesis of horizontal gene transfer into diverse cereal pathogens. Two horizontally acquired genes with no previously known role in fungal pathogenesis were studied functionally via gene knockout methods and shown to significantly affect virulence of F. pseudograminearum on the cereal hosts wheat and barley. Our results indicate using comparative genomics to identify genes specific to pathogens of related hosts reveals novel virulence genes and illustrates the importance of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of plant infecting fungal pathogens.

【 授权许可】

CC BY