Project description:Chromosome-level genome assemblies for the latent pine pathogen, Diplodia sapinea, reveal two rapidly evolving accessory chromosomes
Project description:<p>The European black pine (Pinus nigra J. F. Arnold) is a conifer of high economic and ecological importance, and a potential alternative to several forest tree species in Central Europe in response to global climate warming. Unfortunately, the fungus Diplodia sapinea (Fr.) Fuckel is causing severe damages and world-wide economic losses to this and other Pinus host species. The lack of genomic resources and the scarce knowledge of the tree´s molecular defense mechanisms limit any breeding perspectives. Here, we report the results of a controlled infection experiment in which the transcriptomic and metabolomic profiles of mock and infected P. nigra saplings from two provenances (Austrian and Corsican) were compared over a period of 21 days. This combined approach suggests that P. nigra response to D. sapinea infection is activated 21 days post infection when key plant defense signaling hormones such as jasmonic acid, abscisic acid and salicylic acid were increased. This concurred with a high differential gene expression, including important plant defense related pathways, leading to the induction of several phytoalexins and defense related proteins. Furthermore, we show that some of these responses are provenance specific. Finally, this study identifies the key genes and metabolic pathways involved in the P. nigra defense response to D. sapinea. It provides a solid basis for further characterization of the variation of this response in natural populations with varying susceptibility, as a prerequisite for association studies to better elucidate the resistance mechanism and to select reproductive material.</p>
Project description:<p>Two years-old Pinus nigra saplings from two different provenances (Austria and Corsica) were infected with Diplodia sapinea. Needles from the terminal shoot (distant tissue where systemic induced response might take place) were sampled always in the morning. Samples were taken 3, 8 and 21 days after inoculation (time points T0, T1 and T2, respectively) for all sample groups (mock austrian, infected austrian, mock corsican, infected corsican). A total of 4 biological replicates were sampled.</p><p>An LC-HRMS analysis was performed on a Orbitrap Exploris 120 mass spectrometer coupled with a Vanquish UHPLC System (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Untargeted metabolomics analysis was performed to identify differences in phenylpropanoid profile among different samples.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
Project description:The draft nuclear genomes of Diplodia sapinea, Ceratocystis moniliformis s. str., and C. manginecans are presented. Diplodia sapinea is an important shoot-blight and canker pathogen of Pinus spp., C. moniliformis is a saprobe associated with wounds on a wide range of woody angiosperms and C. manginecans is a serious wilt pathogen of mango and Acacia mangium. The genome size of D. sapinea is estimated at 36.97 Mb and contains 13 020 predicted genes. Ceratocystis moniliformis includes 25.43 Mb and is predicted to encode at least 6 832 genes. This is smaller than that reported for the mango wilt pathogen C. manginecans which is 31.71 Mb and is predicted to encode at least 7 494 genes. The latter is thus more similar to C. fimbriata s.str., the type species of the genus. The genome sequences presented here provide an important resource to resolve issues pertaining to the taxonomy, biology and evolution of these fungi.
Project description:Previously, we showed that miRNA-190 (miR-190) is among the most upregulated miRNAs in all dormant tumors analyzed. Up-regulation of miR-190 led to prolonged tumor dormancy in otherwise fast-growing glioblastomas and osteosarcomas. In this study, we investigated transcriptional changes induced by miR-190 expression in cancer cells and show similar patterns of miR-190-mediated transcriptional reprogramming in both glioblastoma and osteosarcoma cells. The data suggests that miR-190-mediated effects rely on an extensive network of molecular changes in tumor cells and that miR-190 affects several transcriptional factors, tumor suppressor genes and interferon response pathways.
