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Leucine biosynthesis is required for infection-related morphogenesis and pathogenicity in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae

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Abstract

The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae causes one of the most devastating crop diseases world-wide and new control strategies for blast disease are urgently required. We have used insertional mutagenesis in M. oryzae to define biological processes that are critical for blast disease. Here, we report the identification of LEU2A by T-DNA mutagenesis, which putatively encodes 3-isopropylmalate dehydrogenase (3-IPMDH) required for leucine biosynthesis, implicating that synthesis of this amino acid is required for fungal pathogenesis. M. oryzae contains a further predicted 3-IPMDH gene (LEU2B), two 2-isopropylmalate synthase (2-IPMS) genes (LEU4 and LEU9) and an isopropylmalate isomerase (IPMI) gene (LEU1). Targeted gene deletion mutants of LEU1, LEU2A or LEU4 are leucine auxotrophs, and severely defective in pathogenicity. All phenotypes associated with mutants lacking LEU1, LEU2A or LEU4 could be overcome by adding exogenous leucine. The expression levels of LEU1, LEU2A or LEU4 genes were significantly down-regulated by deletion of the transcription factor gene LEU3, an ortholog of Saccharomyces cerevisiae LEU3. We also functionally characterized leucine biosynthesis genes in the wheat pathogen Fusarium graminearum and found that FgLEU1, FgLEU3 and FgLEU4 are essential for wheat head blight disease, suggesting that leucine biosynthesis in filamentous fungal pathogens may be a conserved factor for fungal pathogenicity and, therefore, a potential target for disease control.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 31570135 and 31770153) to ZW. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Rice Biology, Institute of Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, People’s Republic of China

    Yawei Que, Xiaofeng Yue, Nan Yang, Zhe Xu, Shuai Tang, Chunyan Wang, Wuyun Lv, Lin Xu & Zhengyi Wang

  2. The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7UH, UK

    Nicholas J. Talbot

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  1. Yawei Que
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  2. Xiaofeng Yue
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  3. Nan Yang
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  4. Zhe Xu
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  5. Shuai Tang
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  6. Chunyan Wang
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  7. Wuyun Lv
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  8. Lin Xu
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  9. Nicholas J. Talbot
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  10. Zhengyi Wang
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Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: YQ, XY, NT and ZW. Performed the experiments: YQ, XY, NY, ZX, ST, CW, WL, LX and ZW. Analysed the data: YQ, XY, NT and ZW. Wrote the paper: YQ, NT and ZW.

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Correspondence to Zhengyi Wang.

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Communicated by M. Kupiec.

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Que, Y., Yue, X., Yang, N. et al. Leucine biosynthesis is required for infection-related morphogenesis and pathogenicity in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. Curr Genet 66, 155–171 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-019-01009-2

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