FcRav2, a gene with a ROGDI domain involved in Fusarium head blight and crown rot on durum wheat caused by Fusarium culmorum.
Fusarium culmorum is a soil-borne fungal pathogen which causes foot and root rot and Fusarium head blight on small-grain cereals, in particular wheat and barley. It causes significant yield and quality losses and results in the contamination of kernels with type B trichothecene mycotoxins. Our knowledge of the pathogenicity factors of this fungus is still limited. A transposon tagging approach based on the mimp1/impala double-component system has allowed us to select a mutant altered in multiple metabolic and morphological processes, trichothecene production and virulence. The flanking regions of mimp1 were used to seek homologies in the F. culmorum genome, and revealed that mimp1 had reinserted within the last exon of a gene encoding a hypothetical protein of 318 amino acids which contains a ROGDI-like leucine zipper domain, supposedly playing a protein-protein interaction or regulatory role. By functional complementation and bioinformatic analysis, we characterized the gene as the yeast Rav2 homologue, confirming the high level of divergence in multicellular fungi. Deletion of FcRav2 or its orthologous gene in F. graminearum highlighted its ability to influence a number of functions, including virulence, trichothecene type B biosynthesis, resistance to azoles and resistance to osmotic and oxidative stress. Our results indicate that the FcRav2 protein (and possibly the RAVE complex as a whole) may become a suitable target for new antifungal drug development or the plant-mediated resistance response in filamentous fungi of agricultural interest.
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Francesca
F
Spanu
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Barbara
B
Scherm
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Irene
I
Camboni
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Virgilio
V
Balmas
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Giovanna
G
Pani
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.|Faculté des Sciences de Bizerte, Zarzouna TN-7000, Tunisia.
Safa
S
Oufensou
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Nicolo'
N
Macciotta
Dipartimento di Scienze per gli Alimenti la Nutrizione, l'Ambiente, Università di Milano, Milano, I-20133, Italy.
Matias
M
Pasquali
Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.|Unità di Ricerca Istituto Nazionale di Biostrutture e Biosistemi, Sassari, I-07100, Italy.
Quirico
0000-0002-2459-5833
Q
Migheli
D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D005670:Fusarium / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000235:genetics / Q000382:microbiology*; D014908:Triticum / Q000382:microbiology*; D014774:Virulence
D005656:Fungal Proteins
Fusarium graminearum; Fusarium head blight; fungal pathogens; fungicide; molecular target; transposon tagging; virulence genes