RT journal article
T1 Infection Strategies Deployed by Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium acuminatum, and Rhizopus stolonifer as a Function of Tomato Fruit Ripening Stage
A1 Petrasch, Stefan
A1 Silva, Christian J.
A1 Mesquida-Pesci, Saskia D.
A1 Gallegos, Karina
A1 van den Abeele, Casper
A1 Papin, Victor
A1 Fernández Acero, Francisco Javier
A1 Knapp, Steven J.
A1 Blanco-Ulate, Barbara
A2 Bioquímica y Biología MolecularMicrobiología, Medicina Preventiva, Salud Pública
K1 broad host range pathogens
K1 necrotrophic fungi
K1 fruit-pathogen interactions
K1 rotting
K1 necrotic response
K1 cell wall degrading enzymes
K1 redox
K1 de novo transcriptomes
AB Worldwide, 20–25% of all harvested fruit and vegetables are lost annually in the fieldand throughout the postharvest supply chain due to rotting by fungal pathogens.Most postharvest pathogens exhibit necrotrophic or saprotrophic lifestyles, resulting indecomposition of the host tissues and loss of marketable commodities. Necrotrophicfungi can readily infect ripe fruit leading to the rapid establishment of disease symptoms.However, these pathogens generally fail to infect unripe fruit or remain quiescent untilhost conditions stimulate a successful infection. Previous research on infections offruit has mainly been focused on the host’s genetic and physicochemical factors thatinhibit or promote disease. Here, we investigated if fruit pathogens can modify their owninfection strategies in response to the ripening stage of the host. To test this hypothesis,we profiled global gene expression of three fungal pathogens that display necrotrophicbehavior—Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium acuminatum, and Rhizopus stolonifer—duringinteractions with unripe and ripe tomato fruit. We assembled and functionally annotatedthe transcriptomes of F. acuminatum and R. stolonifer as no genomic resourceswere available. Then, we conducted differential gene expression analysis to compareeach pathogen during inoculations versus in vitro conditions. Through characterizingpatterns of overrepresented pathogenicity and virulence functions (e.g., phytotoxinproduction, cell wall degradation, and proteolysis) among the differentially expressedgenes, we were able to determine shared strategies among the three fungi duringinfections of compatible (ripe) and incompatible (unripe) fruit tissues. Though eachpathogen’s strategy differed in the details, interactions with unripe fruit were commonlycharacterized by an emphasis on the degradation of cell wall components, particularlypectin, while colonization of ripe fruit featured more heavily redox processes, proteolysis,metabolism of simple sugars, and chitin biosynthesis. Furthermore, we determined thatthe three fungi were unable to infect fruit from the non-ripening (nor) tomato mutant, confirming that to cause disease, these pathogens require the host tissues to undergospecific ripening processes. By enabling a better understanding of fungal necrotrophicinfection strategies, we move closer to generating accurate models of fruit diseases andthe development of early detection tools and effective management strategies.
PB FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
SN 1664-462X
YR 2019
FD 2019-03
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/21329
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/21329
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 15-nov-2026