Project description:Botrytis cinerea causes grey mold disease in leading crop plants. The disease develops only at cool temperatures, but the fungus remains viable in warm climates and can survive periods of extreme heat. We discovered a strong heat priming effect in which the exposure of B. cinerea to moderately high temperatures greatly improves its ability to cope with subsequent, potentially lethal temperature conditions. We showed that priming promotes protein solubility during heat stress and discovered a group of priming-induced serine-type peptidases. Several lines of evidence, including transcriptomics, proteomics, pharmacology and mutagenesis data, link these peptidases to the B. cinerea priming response, highlighting their important roles in regulating priming-mediated heat adaptation.
Project description:Botrytis cinerea is the causing agent of grey mould on hundreds of plants cultivated in fields, tunnels and greenhouses worldwide, including economically important crops. Considering the central role of the fungal cell wall in the interaction between fungi and plants, the role of a conserved putative polysaccharide synthase in the physiology, development and virulence of B. cinerea was explored. To this aim, the BcCps1 gene was deleted and the mutant strain was characterized. In order to reveal the impact of the mutation on the fungal secretion, the exo-proteome of the wild type and mutant strains were prepared for comparative analysis of their contents.
Project description:Botrytis cinerea is the causing agent of grey mould on hundreds of plants cultivated in fields, tunnels and greenhouses worldwide. Considering the central role of secretion in the necrotrophic interaction between the fungus and its host plants, non conventional secre-tion was explored through the search and characterisation of extracellular vesicles. In or-der to reveal the protein composition of these vesicles, a proteomic analysis was chosen.
Project description:ELICITOM project aims to decipher the complex regulation of tomato induced resistance to pathogens. Here, we use a classical elicitor of tomato defenses, ie beta-aminobutyric acid (BABA). This unusual amino acid triggers a strong resistance to the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora parasitica as well as to Oidium neolycopersici (powdery mildew) to a lesser extent. No resistance could be observed towards the grey mold (Botrytis cinerea). Transcriptomic data were generated from RNA extracted from tomato leaves (Solanum lycopercum cv "Marmande") sprayed with 10 mM BABA compared to control organs treated with water, 24 h after treatment. Mapping was achieved on Solanum lycopersicum cv Heinz1706 genome (release ITAG2,3).
Project description:Botrytis cinerea causes grey mold disease in leading crop plants. The disease develops only at cool temperatures, but the fungus remains viable in warm climates and can survive periods of extreme heat. We discovered a strong heat priming effect in which the exposure of B. cinerea to moderately high temperatures greatly improves its ability to cope with subsequent, potentially lethal temperature conditions. We showed that priming promotes protein solubility during heat stress and discovered a group of priming-induced serine-type peptidases. Several lines of evidence, including transcriptomics, proteomics, pharmacology and mutagenesis data, link these peptidases to the B. cinerea priming response, highlighting their important roles in regulating priming-mediated heat adaptation. By imposing a series of sub-lethal temperature pulses that subverted the priming effect, we managed to eliminate the fungus and prevent disease development, demonstrating the potential for developing temperature-based plant protection methods by targeting the fungal heat priming response.
