Project description:Worldwide, 20-25% of all harvested fruit and vegetables are lost annually in the field and throughout the postharvest supply handling chain due to spoilage by fungal pathogens. Most impactful postharvest pathogens exhibit necrotrophic lifestyles, resulting in rotting of the host tissues and complete loss of marketable commodities. Necrotrophic fungi 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 until host and environmental conditions stimulate a successful infection. Current research on necrotrophic infections of fruit was mainly focused on the host by characterizing genetic and physicochemical factors that inhibit or promote the disease. However, the pathogenicity and virulence strategies employed by necrotrophic pathogens in ripe and unripe fruit are mostly understudied. Here, we provide a first comparative transcriptomics study of fungal postharvest pathogens: Botrytis cinerea, Rhizopus stolonifer and Fusarium acuminatum, all of which display necrotrophic behavior when infecting fruit. We de novo assembled and annotated the transcriptomes of R. stolonifer, and F. acuminatum and performed a differential gene expression analysis comparing the three fungal transcriptomes during fruit infection with that of fungal in-vitro growth. Analysis of the differentially expressed genes for enrichment of functional annotations revealed shared strategies of the three fungi during infection of compatible (ripe fruit) and incompatible (unripe fruit) hosts. We furthermore selected candidate genes that are involved in these strategies to characterize their expression during infection of unripe and ripe-like fruit of the non-ripening (nor) tomato mutant, both of which are physiologically and biochemically similar to unripe wildtype fruit. By enabling a better understanding of fungal necrotrophic infection strategies, we move closer to generating accurate models of fruit diseases and development of early detection tools and effective management strategies.
Project description:Condyloma acuminatum is a sexually transmitted disease characterized by the anomalous proliferation of keratinocytes caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Fu Fang Gang Liu liquid (FFGL) is an effective external prescription to treat condyloma acuminatum, but its potential molecular mechanism is still unclear. This study aimed to identify the major active ingredients and prospective targets of FFGL by using network pharmacology, molecular docking, and transcriptomics, and validating it experimentally. Network pharmacology analysis found that FFGL contains a total of 78 active compounds, from which 610 compound-related targets were screened. Among them, 59 compound-related targets overlapped with CA targets and were considered as targets with potential therapeutic effects. Protein-protein network analysis showed that AKT serine/threonine kinase 1 was the potential therapeutic target. To further confirm this result we performed RNA-seq assays on HPV18+ cells after FFGL intervention, and conducted enrichment analyses on the screened differentially expressed genes. Enrichment analyses results indicated that the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) pathway may be a key pathway for FFGL to function. Further in vitro experiments revealed that FFGL significantly inhibited the activity of HPV18+ cells and reduced PI3K and Akt protein levels. Rescue experiment indicated that the reduction in cell viability caused by FFGL was partially restored after the use of activators of the PI3K/Akt pathway. We further explored the active components of FFCL for the treatment of condyloma acuminatum and screened two active compounds, periplogenin and periplocymarin. Molecular docking showed that these two compounds have good binding activity to AKT1.