Project description:Acute Oak Decline (AOD) is a decline-disease currently spreading in Britain, threatening oak trees. Here, we analyze and compare the proteomes of inner bark tissue sampled from oak stems of trees symptomatic with AOD and non-symptomatic trees.
Project description:Seedlings grown from seeds from open-pollinated mother trees of genotype UF12 were grown and at two months of age used to analyze response to treatment with the fungal pathogen Colletotrichum theobromicola and the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora palmivora.
Project description:Expression diversity of P. ramorum isolates belonging to the NA1 clonal lineage growing on solid CV8 was examined. We found that phenotypes and transcriptomes change when isolates were passing through oak trees.
Project description:Sphaerulina musiva is an economically and ecologically important fungal pathogen that causes Septoria stem canker and leaf spot disease of Populus species. To bridge the gap between genetic markers and structural barriers previously found to be linked to Septoria canker disease resistance in poplar, we used hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry to identify and quantify metabolites involved with signaling and cell wall remodeling. Fluctuations in signaling molecules, organic acids, amino acids, sterols, phenolics, and saccharides in resistant and susceptible P. trichocarpa inoculated with S. musiva were observed. The patterns of 222 metabolites in the resistant host implicate systemic acquired resistance (SAR), cell wall apposition, and lignin deposition as modes of resistance to this hemibiotrophic pathogen. This pattern is consistent with the expected response to the biotrophic phase of S. musiva colonization during the first 24 h postinoculation. The fungal pathogen metabolized key regulatory signals of SAR, other phenolics, and precursors of lignin biosynthesis that were depleted in the susceptible host. This is the first study to characterize metabolites associated with the response to initial colonization by S. musiva between resistant and susceptible hosts.
The work (proposal:https://doi.org/10.46936/10.25585/60000891) conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (https://ror.org/04xm1d337), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Project description:Protein lysine acetylation, a dynamic and reversible posttranslational modification, plays a crucial role in several cellular processes including cell cycle regulation, metabolic pathways, enzymatic activities and protein interactions. Brenneria nigrifluens is the pathogen of shallow bark canker of walnut trees and can cause serious disease on walnut trees. Up to now, it is little known about the roles of lysine acetylation in the plant pathogenic bacteria. In the present study, the lysine acetylome of B. nigrifluens was determined by high-resolution LC-MS/MS analysis. In total, we identified 1,866 lysine acetylation sites distributed in 737 acetylated proteins. Bioinformatics results indicate that acetylated proteins participate in many different biological functions in B. nigrifluens. Four conserved motifs, namely, LKac, Kac*F, I*Kac and L*Kac, were identified in this bacterium. Protein interaction network analysis indicates that all kinds of interactions are modulated by protein lysine acetylation. Overall, 14 acetylated proteins are related to the virulence of B. nigrifluens.
Project description:Leptosphaeria maculans, causal agent of stem canker disease, colonises oilseed rape (Brassica napus) in two stages: a short and early colonisation stage corresponding to cotyledon or leaf colonisation, and a late colonisation stage during which the fungus colonises systemically and symptomlessly the plant during several months before stem canker appears. To date, determinants of the late colonisation stage are poorly understood; L. maculans may either successfully escape plant defences leading to the stem canker development, or the plant can develop an “adult-stage” resistance reducing canker incidence. To get insight into these determinants, we performed an RNA-seq pilot project comparing fungal gene expression in infected cotyledons and in symptomless and necrotic stems. Despite the low fraction of fungal material in infected stems, enough fungal transcripts were detected and a large portion of fungal genes were expressed, thus validating the feasibility of the approach. Our analysis showed that all avirulence genes previously identified are under-expressed during stem colonisation compared to cotyledon colonisation. A validation RNA-seq experiment was then done to investigate the expression of candidate effector genes during systemic colonisation. 307 "late" effector candidates, under-expressed in the early colonisation stage and over-expressed in the infected stems, were identified. Finally our analysis revealed a link between regulation of expression of effectors and their genomic location: the late effector candidates, putatively involved in the systemic colonisation, are located in gene-rich genomic regions, whereas the "early" effector genes, over-expressed in the early colonisation stage, are located in gene-poor regions of the genome.
Project description:The pathological interaction between oak trees and Phytophthora cinnamomi has implications in the cork oak decline observed over the last decades in the Iberian Peninsula. During host colonization, the phytopathogen secretes effector molecules like elicitins to increase disease effectiveness. The objective of this study was to unravel the proteome changes associated to with the cork oak immune response triggered by P. cinnamomi inoculation in a long-term assay, through SWATH-MS quantitative proteomics performed in the oak leaves. Using the Arabidopis thaliana proteome database as a reference, 424 proteins have been confidently quantified in cork oak leaves, of which 80 proteins showed a p-value below 0.05 or a fold-change greater than 2 or less than 0.5 in their levels between control and inoculated samples being considered as altered. The inoculation of cork oak roots with P. cinnamomi increased the levels of proteins associated with protein-DNA complex assembly, lipid oxidation, response to endoplasmic reticulum stress, and pyridine-containing compound metabolic process in the leaves. In opposition, several proteins associated with cellular metabolic compound salvage and monosaccharide catabolic process had significantly decreased abundances. The most significant abundance variations were observed for the Ribulose 1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase small subunit (RBCS1A), Heat Shock protein 90-1 (Hsp90-1), Lipoxygenase 2 (LOX2) and Histone superfamily protein H3.3 (A8MRLO/At4G40030) revealing a pertinent role for these proteins in the host-pathogen interaction mechanism. This work represents the first SWATH-MS analysis performed in cork oak plants inoculated with P. cinnamomi and highlights host proteins that have a relevant action in the homeostatic states that emerge from the interaction between the oomycete and the host in the long term and in a distal organ.