Project description:Ustilago hordei is a basidiomycete fungus that infects barley and oats. It has a narrow host range and can infect only germinating seedlings. Symptoms do not occur until heading of the mature plants when the fungus has proliferated in meristematic tissue and replaces kernels with masses of black teliospores. Incompatibility is due to the presence of an avirulence effector product, UhAVR1, expressed in the fungus upon infection and secreted into the host, which is subsequently recognized by the barley plant resistance gene product RUH1 in cultivar Hannchen, leading to plant cell death, fungal growth arrest, and no disease. We have identified UhAvr1, and the transcriptome response of the barley plant to strains with and deleted for this gene was assessed using the 22K Affymetrix barley array. Incompatibility and cell death is apparent at 48 hrs after inoculation, so the transcriptome was assessed at this time point. For comparison, the transcriptome of barley cultivar Odessa, which lacks resistance gene Ruh1, during a compatible interaction was also assessed.
Project description:Blumeria graminis f.sp. hordei is an obligate biotrohic fungal pathogen causing powdery mildew in barley. As for other biotrophic fungi, haustorial structures are at the centre of the biotrophic interaction and molecular exchanges, delivering fungal effectors or virulence factors, and taking nutrient from the host. Haustoria are originiated by the fungus, following successful penetration of the initial penetration peg through the plant cell call. Haustorial structures mainly of fungal origin, but they are surrounding by a plant component, the extrauhaustorial membrane and matrix (EHM and EHMx) forming the extrahuastorial complex (EHMc). The plant protein make-up of the plant extrahaustorial components remained unexplored, and this is a first study trying to describe plant proteome associated with haustoria using samples enriched for these structures. Therefore, proteomes of haustoria enriched samples from the epidermis of barley leaves infected with Blumeria graminins f.sp. hordei, the causing agent of barley powdery mildew, were compared to infected epidermis and un-infected epidermis to identify haustoria associated plant proteins. Haustoria were enriched from infected epidermis by digesting epidermal cell walls with cell wall degrading enzymes prior to enrichment for haustorial structures. Proteins identified in these samples were compared to infected and uninfected epidermis samples using a non-targeted label free semi-quantitation method.
Project description:The success of plant pathogenic fungi mostly relies on their arsenal of virulence factors that are expressed and delivered into the host tissue during colonization. The biotrophic fungal pathogen Ustilago hordei causes covered smut disease on both barley and oat. The biotrophic interaction of the fungus with its host plant starts with formation of appressorium and subsequent penetration of invasive hyphae into the plant cell, in which the plasma membrane of the infected cell gets invaginated and encases the penetrating hypha. After penetration, the fungus grows towards and in later stages along the vascular bundles, which contain assimilates and metabolites, representing a source of nutrients for the fungus. In this study, we combined cytological, genomics and molecular biological methods to achieve a better understanding of the molecular interactions in the U. hordei-barley pathosystem. This study focuses on the genome-wide Agilent Microarray-based transcriptome analysis of U. hordei during early stages (20 hpi, 40 hpi, 3 dpi, 6 dpi) of the biotrophic interaction in comparison to axenic culture growth. This should give insights into the molecular processes during these stages by the identification of regulated genes. Furthermore, the regulation of putative secreted enzymes and effector proteins can be studied. Transcriptome analysis of U. hordei at different stages of host infection revealed 273 effector gene candidates with differentially expressed transcript levels. Furthermore, U. hordei transcriptionally activates core-effector genes that may suppress even non-host early defense responses. It could be shown that about one half of the U. hordei open reading frames are differentially regulated during at least one of the analyzed stages. Based on the transcriptome data, some of them were identified to be involved in stage-specific processes, e.g. in the nutrient acquisition by the induction of carbohydrate transporters during the later stages of infection. Furthermore, a set of strongly induced genes was identified, which encode for secreted proteins. The acquired datasets show a strong induction of stage-specific secreted effector proteins, whose functions remain unclear. Based on the expression values, a group of 16 promising candidates was chosen for functional characterization. The success of plant pathogenic fungi mostly relies on their arsenal of virulence factors that are expressed and delivered into the host tissue during colonization. The biotrophic fungal pathogen Ustilago hordei causes covered smut disease on both barley and oat. The biotrophic interaction of the fungus with its host plant starts with formation of appressorium and subsequent penetration of invasive hyphae into the plant cell, in which the plasma membrane of the infected cell gets invaginated and encases the penetrating hypha. After penetration, the fungus grows towards and in later stages along the vascular bundles, which contain assimilates and metabolites, representing a source of nutrients for the fungus. In this study, we combined cytological, genomics and molecular biological methods to achieve a better understanding of the molecular interactions in the U. hordei-barley pathosystem. This study focuses on the genome-wide Agilent Microarray-based transcriptome analysis of U. hordei during early stages (20 hpi, 40 hpi, 3 dpi, 6 dpi) of the biotrophic interaction in comparison to axenic culture growth. This should give insights into the molecular processes during these stages by the identification of regulated genes. Furthermore, the regulation of putative secreted enzymes and effector proteins can be studied. Transcriptome analysis of U. hordei at different stages of host infection revealed 273 effector gene candidates with differentially expressed transcript levels. Furthermore, U. hordei transcriptionally activates core-effector genes that may suppress even non-host early defense responses. It could be shown that about one half of the U. hordei open reading frames are differentially regulated during at least one of the analyzed stages. Based on the transcriptome data, some of them were identified to be involved in stage-specific processes, e.g. in the nutrient acquisition by the induction of carbohydrate transporters during the later stages of infection. Furthermore, a set of strongly induced genes was identified, which encode for secreted proteins.The acquired datasets show a strong induction of stage-specific secreted effector proteins, whose functions remain unclear. Based on the expression values, a group of 16 promising candidates was chosen for functional characterization.
Project description:Transposable elements (TEs) play a pivotal role in shaping diversity in eukaryotic genomes. The covered smut pathogen on barley, Ustilago hordei, encountered a recent genome expansion. Using long reads, we assembled genomes of 6 U. hordei strains and 3 sister species, to study this genome expansion. We found that larger genome sizes can mainly be attributed to a higher genome fraction of long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-RTs). In the studied smut genomes, LTR-RTs fractions are the largest in U. hordei and are positively correlated to the mating-type locus sizes, which is up to ~560 kb in U. hordei. Furthermore, LTR-RTs were found to be associated with higher nucleotide substitution levels, as these occur in specific genome regions of smut species with a recent LTR-RT proliferation. Moreover, genes in genome regions with higher nucleotide substitution levels generally reside closer to LTR-RTs than other genome regions. Genome regions with many nucleotide substitutions encountered an especially high fraction of CG substitutions, which is not observed for LTR-RT sequences. The high nucleotide substitution levels particularly accelerate the evolution of secretome genes, as their more accessory nature results that substitutions often lead to amino acid alterations.
Project description:Colonization of barley roots with the basidiomycete fungus Piriformospora indica enhances resistance against the leaf pathogen Blumeria graminis f.sp. hordei (Bgh). To identify genes involved in this mycorrhiza-induced systemic resistance, we used the Affymetrix Barley1 22K gene chip for leaf transcriptome analysis of P. indica-colonized and non-colonized barley plants 12, 24 and 96 hours post inoculation (hpi) with a compatible Bgh strain.
Project description:We hypothesized that the genome segments of cultivated barley should show certain similarity with its ancestral wild barley. Instead of whole genome sequences, we employed RNA-Seq to investigated the genomic origin of modern cultivated barley using some representative wild barley genotypes from the Near East and Tibet, and representative world-wide selections of cultivated barley.
Project description:Purpose: The powdery mildew fungus, Blumeria graminis, is an obligate biotrophic pathogen of cereals and has significant impact on food security (Dean et al., 2012. Molecular Plant Pathology 13 (4): 414-430. DOI: 10.1111/j.1364-3703.2011.00783.x). Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei (Bgh) is the causal agent of powdery mildew on barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). We sought to discover novel transcripts expressed following barley infection with blumeria.
Project description:Transcriptome sequencing of first leaf of barley (Hordeum vulgare) infected with Puccinia striiformis f. sp. hordei isolate B01/2 (barley stripe rust).