AI Article Synopsis
- Fungal pathogens, particularly smut fungi, use specialized molecules called effectors for infection, with smut fungi having smaller genomes and secretomes compared to other plant pathogens.
- A study analyzed the secretomes of 11 Ustilaginaceae species, identifying 53 core effector protein groups conserved in this family.
- Testing revealed that 20 out of 53 mutant strains lacking specific effectors showed reduced virulence, leading to the identification of seven new core effectors that contribute to pathogenicity.
Article Abstract
Fungal pathogens deploy a set of molecules (proteins, specialized metabolites, and sRNAs), so-called effectors, to aid the infection process. In comparison to other plant pathogens, smut fungi have small genomes and secretomes of 20 Mb and around 500 proteins, respectively. Previous comparative genomic studies have shown that many secreted effector proteins without known domains, i.e., novel, are conserved only in the Ustilaginaceae family. By analyzing the secretomes of 11 species within Ustilaginaceae, we identified 53 core homologous groups commonly present in this lineage. By collecting existing mutants and generating additional ones, we gathered 44 strains lacking single core effectors as well as 9 strains containing multiple deletions of core effector gene families. Pathogenicity assays revealed that 20 of these 53 mutant strains were affected in virulence. Among the 33 mutants that had no obvious phenotypic changes, 13 carried additional, sequence-divergent, structurally similar paralogs. We report a virulence contribution of seven previously uncharacterized single core effectors and of one effector family. Our results help to prioritize effectors for understanding virulence and provide genetic resources for further characterization. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/MPMI-09-23-0139-FI | DOI Listing |
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