Abstract
Plants face many biotic and abiotic challenges in nature; one of them is attack by disease-causing microbes. Phytophthora infestans, the causal agent of late blight is one of the most prominent pathogens of the potato responsible for multi-billion-dollar losses every year. We have previously reported that potato-associated Pseudomonas strains inhibited P. infestans at various developmental stages. A comparative genomics approach identified several factors putatively involved in this anti-oomycete activity, among which was the production of hydrogen cyanide (HCN). Here, we report the relative contribution of HCN emission to the overall anti-Phytophthora activity of two cyanogenic Pseudomonas strains, P. putida R32 and P. chlororaphis R47. To quantify this contribution, we generated HCN-negative mutants (Δhcn) and compared their activities to those of their respective wild types in different experiments assessing P. infestans mycelial growth, zoospore germination, and infection of potato leaf disks. Using in vitro experiments allowing only volatile-mediated interactions, we observed that HCN accounted for most of the mycelial growth inhibition (57% in R47 and 80% in R32). However, when allowing both volatile and diffusible compound-mediated interactions, HCN only accounted for 1% (R47) and 18% (R32) of mycelial growth inhibition. Likewise, both mutants inhibited zoospore germination in a similar way as their respective wild types. More importantly, leaf disk experiments showed that both wild-type and Δhcn strains of R47 and R32 were able to limit P. infestans infection to a similar extent. Our results suggest that while HCN is a major contributor to the in vitro volatile-mediated restriction of P. infestans mycelial growth, it does not play a major role in the inhibition of other disease-related features such as zoospore germination or infection of plant tissues.
Highlights
In nature, plants face a variety of biotic and abiotic challenges such as climate change and infection by disease-causing microorganisms
As an alternative tool to control plant diseases, researchers have focused their interest on identifying biocontrol agents [5], many of which are isolated from the host plants or soil [6]
Diffusible compound-mediated assay showed that the lack of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) emission did not significantly impact the inhibition potential of R47 against P. infestans mycelial growth
Summary
Plants face a variety of biotic and abiotic challenges such as climate change and infection by disease-causing microorganisms. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) has been reported by many studies to be a key biocontrol trait and was shown to be produced by multiple Pseudomonas species [8,9,10,11,12,13]. It is generally considered as a secondary metabolite produced at the end of the exponential phase and the start of the stationary phase. Many organisms have developed different strategies to avoid cyanide intoxication such as chemical conversion of HCN to thiocyanate by the rhodanese enzyme or the use of cyanide-insensitive oxidases [17,18,19]
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