title: AAC as a Potential Target Gene to Control Verticillium dahliae.
abstract: Verticillium dahliaeinvades the roots of host plants and causes vascular wilt, which seriously diminishes the yield of cotton and other important crops. The protein AAC (ADP, ATP carrier) is responsible for transferring ATP from the mitochondria into the cytoplasm. WhenV. dahliaeprotoplasts were transformed with short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) targeting theVdAACgene, fungal growth and sporulation were significantly inhibited. To further confirm a role forVdAACin fungal development, we generated knockout mutants (ΔVdACC). Compared with wild-typeV. dahliae(Vd wt), ΔVdAACwas impaired in germination and virulence; these impairments were rescued in the complementary strains (ΔVdAAC-C). Moreover, when an RNAi construct ofVdAACunder the control of the 35S promoter was used to transformNicotiana benthamiana, the expression ofVdAACwas downregulated in the transgenic seedlings, and they had elevated resistance againstV. dahliae. The results of this study suggest thatVdAACcontributes to fungal development, virulence and is a promising candidate gene to controlV. dahliae. In addition, RNAi is a highly efficient way to silence fungal genes and provides a novel strategy to improve disease resistance in plants.
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. suxiaofeng@caas.cn.
authors.forename: Xiaofeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. latif_ibge@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Latifur
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rehman
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. guohuiming@caas.cn.
authors.forename: Huiming
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. lixiaokang2016@163.com.
authors.forename: Xiaokang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. zhangrui@caas.cn.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. chenghongmei@caas.cn.
authors.forename: Hongmei
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
keywords: RNAi; VdAAC; Verticillium dahliae; growth; virulence