Project description:Worldwide, 20-25% of all harvested fruit and vegetables are lost annually in the field and throughout the postharvest supply handling chain due to spoilage by fungal pathogens. Most impactful postharvest pathogens exhibit necrotrophic lifestyles, resulting in rotting of the host tissues and complete loss of marketable commodities. Necrotrophic fungi can readily infect ripe fruit leading to the rapid establishment of disease symptoms. However, these pathogens generally fail to infect unripe fruit, or remain quiescent until host and environmental conditions stimulate a successful infection. Current research on necrotrophic infections of fruit was mainly focused on the host by characterizing genetic and physicochemical factors that inhibit or promote the disease. However, the pathogenicity and virulence strategies employed by necrotrophic pathogens in ripe and unripe fruit are mostly understudied. Here, we provide a first comparative transcriptomics study of fungal postharvest pathogens: Botrytis cinerea, Rhizopus stolonifer and Fusarium acuminatum, all of which display necrotrophic behavior when infecting fruit. We de novo assembled and annotated the transcriptomes of R. stolonifer, and F. acuminatum and performed a differential gene expression analysis comparing the three fungal transcriptomes during fruit infection with that of fungal in-vitro growth. Analysis of the differentially expressed genes for enrichment of functional annotations revealed shared strategies of the three fungi during infection of compatible (ripe fruit) and incompatible (unripe fruit) hosts. We furthermore selected candidate genes that are involved in these strategies to characterize their expression during infection of unripe and ripe-like fruit of the non-ripening (nor) tomato mutant, both of which are physiologically and biochemically similar to unripe wildtype fruit. By enabling a better understanding of fungal necrotrophic infection strategies, we move closer to generating accurate models of fruit diseases and development of early detection tools and effective management strategies.
Project description:Condyloma acuminatum is a sexually transmitted disease characterized by the anomalous proliferation of keratinocytes caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Fu Fang Gang Liu liquid (FFGL) is an effective external prescription to treat condyloma acuminatum, but its potential molecular mechanism is still unclear. This study aimed to identify the major active ingredients and prospective targets of FFGL by using network pharmacology, molecular docking, and transcriptomics, and validating it experimentally. Network pharmacology analysis found that FFGL contains a total of 78 active compounds, from which 610 compound-related targets were screened. Among them, 59 compound-related targets overlapped with CA targets and were considered as targets with potential therapeutic effects. Protein-protein network analysis showed that AKT serine/threonine kinase 1 was the potential therapeutic target. To further confirm this result we performed RNA-seq assays on HPV18+ cells after FFGL intervention, and conducted enrichment analyses on the screened differentially expressed genes. Enrichment analyses results indicated that the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) pathway may be a key pathway for FFGL to function. Further in vitro experiments revealed that FFGL significantly inhibited the activity of HPV18+ cells and reduced PI3K and Akt protein levels. Rescue experiment indicated that the reduction in cell viability caused by FFGL was partially restored after the use of activators of the PI3K/Akt pathway. We further explored the active components of FFCL for the treatment of condyloma acuminatum and screened two active compounds, periplogenin and periplocymarin. Molecular docking showed that these two compounds have good binding activity to AKT1.
Project description:Fusarium fujikuroi is a biotechnologically important fungus due to its almost unique ability to produce gibberellic acids (GAs), a family of phytohormones. The fungus was described about 100 years ago as the causative agent of Bakanae (M-bM-^@M-^\foolish seedlingM-bM-^@M-^]) disease of rice. Apart from GAs, the fungus is known to produce pigments and mycotoxins, but the biosynthetic genes are known for only eight products. Here we present a high-quality genome sequence of the first member of the Gibberella fujikuroi species complex (GFC) that allowed de novo genome assembly with 12 scaffolds corresponding to the 12 chromosomes. In this work we focused on identification of all potential secondary metabolism-related gene clusters and their regulation in response to nitrogen availability by transcriptome, proteome, HPLC-FTMS and ChIP-seq analyses. We show that most of the cluster genes are regulated in a nitrogen-dependent manner, and that expression profiles fit to proteome and ChIP-seq data for some but not all clusters. Comparison with genomes of all available Fusarium species, including the recently sequenced F. mangiferae and F. circinatum, showed only a small number of common gene clusters and provides new insights into the divergence of secondary metabolism in the genus Fusarium. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that some gene clusters were acquired by horizontal gene transfer, while others were present in ancient Fusarim species and have evolved differently by gene duplications and losses. One polyketide synthase (PKS) and one non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) gene cluster are unique for F. fujikuroi. Their products were identified by combining overexpression of cluster genes with HPLC-FTMS-based analyses. In planta expression studies suggest a specific role of the PKS19 product in rice infection. Our results indicate that comparative genomics together with the used genome-wide experimental approaches is a powerful tool to uncover new secondary metabolites and to understand their regulation at the transcriptional, translational and epigenetic levels. Examination of 3 different histone modifications, with 2 growth conditions for one of the modifications (Total of 4 samples)
Project description:Genome-wide search for AreA-dependent and -independent nitrogen-regulated genes in Fusarium fujikuroi by cross-species hybridization with F. verticillioides microarrays. Keywords: glutamine treatmet Compare expression of genes of Fusarium fujikuroi wild-type and areA mutant strains responding to nitrogen limitation or sufficiency.