Abstract
Microbial opsins play a crucial role in responses to various environmental signals. Here, we report that the microbial opsin homolog gene sop1 from the necrotrophic phytopathogenic fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum was dramatically up-regulated during infection and sclerotial development compared with the vegetative growth stage. Further, study showed that sop1 was essential for growth, sclerotial development and full virulence of S. sclerotiorum. Sop1-silenced transformants were more sensitive to high salt stress, fungicides and high osmotic stress. However, they were more tolerant to oxidative stress compared with the wild-type strain, suggesting that sop1 is involved in different stress responses and fungicide resistance, which plays a role in the environmental adaptability of S. sclerotiorum. Furthermore, a Delta blast search showed that microbial opsins are absent from the genomes of animals and most higher plants, indicating that sop1 is a potential drug target for disease control of S. sclerotiorum.
Highlights
The white mold fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary is a typical necrotrophic phytopathogen with a remarkably broad host range and worldwide distribution
Two microbial opsin homologs were found in S. sclerotiorum genome: SS1G_01614 (GenBank accession: XP_001597420) and SS1G_04339 (GenBank accession: XP_001594532) and these were designated as sop1 and sop2, respectively, in this study
The predicted three dimensional (3D) structure of sop1 showed that it shared a strong structural similarity with the eukaryotic light-driven protonpumping rhodopsin Acetabularia rhodopsin II (ARII) from the marine alga A. acetabulum (Wada et al, 2011; Figure 1B)
Summary
The white mold fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary is a typical necrotrophic phytopathogen with a remarkably broad host range and worldwide distribution. There are several key steps in the life cycle of S. sclerotiorum: vegetative growth, infection, sclerotial development, sclerotial myceliogenic germination, sclerotial carpogenic germination, and apothecium formation (stipe). The sclerotia produced by S. sclerotiorum are pigmented, hard, asexual resting structures capable of surviving for years in soil (Adams and Ayers, 1979; Le Tourneau, 1979; Willetts and Bullock, 1992). Sclerotia can either germinate myceliogenically to produce mycelia or carpogenically to form apothecia, which can produce abundant ascospores. Ascospores can undergo airborne dissemination, which is the most important means of S. sclerotiorum dispersal (Chet and Henis, 1975; Abawi and Grogan, 1979; Steadman, 1979). Previous research has demonstrated that oxalic acid and a wide array of cell wall degrading
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