Abstract
The pathogenic fungus Fusarium graminearum (F. graminearum), causing Fusarium head blight (FHB) or scab, is one of the most important cereal killers worldwide, exerting great economic and agronomic losses on global grain production. To repress pathogen invasion, plants have evolved a sophisticated innate immunity system for pathogen recognition and defense activation. Simultaneously, pathogens continue to evolve more effective means of invasion to conquer plant resistance systems. In the process of co-evolution of plants and pathogens, several small RNAs (sRNAs) have been proved in regulating plant immune response and plant-microbial interaction. In this study, we report that a F. graminearum sRNA (Fg-sRNA1) can suppress wheat defense response by targeting and silencing a resistance-related gene, which codes a Chitin Elicitor Binding Protein (TaCEBiP). Transcriptional level evidence indicates that Fg-sRNA1 can target TaCEBiP mRNA and trigger silencing of TaCEBiP in vivo, and in Nicotiana benthamiana (N. benthamiana) plants, Western blotting experiments and YFP Fluorescence observation proofs show that Fg-sRNA1 can suppress the accumulation of protein coding by TaCEBiP gene in vitro. F. graminearum PH-1 strain displays a weakening ability to invasion when Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) vector induces effective silencing Fg-sRNA1 in PH-1 infected wheat plants. Taken together, our results suggest that a small RNA from F. graminearum can target and silence the wheat TaCEBiP gene to enhance invasion of F. graminearum.
Highlights
At present, widely recognized mechanisms of plant disease resistance are divided into two categories [1,2,3,4]
The F. graminearum cytochrome P450 lanosterol C-14α-demethylase (CYP51) genes fragment was stably transformed into Arabidopsis and barley plants, and found that stable transgenic plants obtained for resistance to F. graminearum by means of host-induced gene silencing (HIGS) [22]
To explore the role of F. graminearum small RNAs (sRNAs) in regulation of host–pathogen interaction, we profiled the sRNA library prepared from F. graminearum total biomass after three days of culture. sRNA libraries prepared from F. graminearum infected wheat leaves, collected at 0, 24 and 72 h after inoculation, were used as controls
Summary
Widely recognized mechanisms of plant disease resistance are divided into two categories [1,2,3,4]. The traditional methods of plant disease research techniques commonly used are host-induced gene silencing (HIGS), which is a method of reverse genetics technique widely used It can be artificially induced by pathogens associated with double stranded RNA fragments, so that plants get new disease-resistant function via HIGS [19,20]. The F. graminearum cytochrome P450 lanosterol C-14α-demethylase (CYP51) genes fragment was stably transformed into Arabidopsis and barley plants, and found that stable transgenic plants obtained for resistance to F. graminearum by means of HIGS [22] These HIGS technology applications are based on artificially induced plant pathogens which produce exogenous siRNAs, a direct over-expression or silencing of F. graminearum small RNA molecules in common wheat has not been found [23]. We found one F. graminearum endogenous sRNA could target the wheat CEBiP gene, and negatively regulate wheat resistance
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