Paths of Least Resistance: Unconventional Effector Secretion by Fungal and Oomycete Plant Pathogens.

Mol Plant Microbe Interact

Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, U.S.A.

Published: September 2024

AI Article Synopsis

  • Different secretion routes for effectors play a crucial role in the interaction between host plants and pathogens, particularly in eukaryotes, where details are still unclear, hindering disease resistance advancements.
  • Fungi and oomycetes utilize both conventional (ER-Golgi) and unconventional (Golgi bypass) pathways for effector secretion, incorporating specific molecular components to facilitate their delivery to the host.
  • Effector mRNA translation is influenced by codon usage, particularly AA-ending codons, which affects the efficiency of effector production and pathogen success in invading host plants, highlighting a vital aspect of host-pathogen interactions that requires more research.

Article Abstract

Effector secretion by different routes mediates the molecular interplay between host plant and pathogen, but mechanistic details in eukaryotes are sparse. This may limit the discovery of new effectors that could be utilized for improving host plant disease resistance. In fungi and oomycetes, apoplastic effectors are secreted via the conventional endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-Golgi pathway, while cytoplasmic effectors are packaged into vesicles that bypass Golgi in an unconventional protein secretion (UPS) pathway. In , the Golgi bypass UPS pathway incorporates components of the exocyst complex and a t-SNARE, presumably to fuse Golgi bypass vesicles to the fungal plasma membrane. Upstream, cytoplasmic effector mRNA translation in requires the efficient decoding of AA-ending codons. This involves the modification of wobble uridines in the anticodon loop of cognate tRNAs and fine-tunes cytoplasmic effector translation and secretion rates to maintain biotrophic interfacial complex integrity and permit host infection. Thus, plant-fungal interface integrity is intimately tied to effector codon usage, which is a surprising constraint on pathogenicity. Here, we discuss these findings within the context of fungal and oomycete effector discovery, delivery, and function in host cells. We show how cracking the codon code for unconventional cytoplasmic effector secretion in has revealed AA-ending codon usage bias in cytoplasmic effector mRNAs across kingdoms, including within the RxLR-dEER motif-encoding sequence of a bona fide cytoplasmic effector, suggesting its subjection to translational speed control. By focusing on recent developments in understanding unconventional effector secretion, we draw attention to this important but understudied area of host-pathogen interactions. [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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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/MPMI-12-23-0212-CRDOI Listing

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