Abstract
Fusarium graminearum (Fgr) is a devastating filamentous fungal pathogen that causes diseases in cereals, while producing mycotoxins that are toxic for humans and animals, and render grains unusable. Low efficiency in managing Fgr poses a constant need for identifying novel control mechanisms. Evidence that fungal extracellular vesicles (EVs) from pathogenic yeast have a role in human disease led us to question whether this is also true for fungal plant pathogens. We separated EVs from Fgr and performed a proteomic analysis to determine if EVs carry proteins with potential roles in pathogenesis. We revealed that protein effectors, which are crucial for fungal virulence, were detected in EV preparations and some of them did not contain predicted secretion signals. Furthermore, a transcriptomic analysis of corn (Zea mays) plants infected by Fgr revealed that the genes of some of the effectors were highly expressed in vivo, suggesting that the Fgr EVs are a mechanism for the unconventional secretion of effectors and virulence factors. Our results expand the knowledge on fungal EVs in plant pathogenesis and cross-kingdom communication, and may contribute to the discovery of new antifungals.
Highlights
The filamentous fungus Fusarium graminearum (Fgr) is a devastating agricultural pathogen that infects cereals such as wheat, barley, and corn, where in the latter causes a disease known as Fusarium stalk rot that is characterized by low grain yield and premature plant death [1]
In our initial experiments we grew Fgr in 1/2 PDB broth and attempted to separate Extracellular vesicles (EVs) using ultracentrifugation (UC) as we described for Fusarium oxysporum (Fov) [9]
When Fgr was grown in Czapek Dox medium the culture fluid partially obstructed the 100-kDa filters and could not be concentrated to the level required for size-exclusion chromatography (SEC)
Summary
The filamentous fungus Fusarium graminearum (Fgr) is a devastating agricultural pathogen that infects cereals such as wheat, barley, and corn, where in the latter causes a disease known as Fusarium stalk rot that is characterized by low grain yield and premature plant death [1]. Partly because the interaction between Fgr and the corn plant is not well understood [1]. For these reasons, it is important to explore the infection process of. EVs have been identified in more than 20 yeasts and filamentous fungal species, EVs from human pathogens such as Candida albicans [5], and Cryptococcus neoformans [6] are the best characterized
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