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Regulation of Neurospora crassa cell wall remodeling via the cot-1 pathway is mediated by gul-1

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Abstract

Impairment of the Neurospora crassa Nuclear DBF2-related kinase-encoding gene cot-1 results in pleiotropic effects, including abnormally thick hyphal cell walls and septa. An increase in the transcript abundance of genes encoding chitin and glucan synthases and the chitinase gh18-5, but not the cell wall integrity pathway transcription factor rlm-1, accompany the phenotypic changes observed. Deletion of chs-5 or chs-7 in a cot-1 background results in a reduction of hyperbranching frequency characteristic of the cot-1 parent. gul-1 (a homologue of the yeast SSD1 gene) encodes a translational regulator and has been shown to partially suppress cot-1. We demonstrate that the high expression levels of the cell wall remodeling genes analyzed is curbed, and reaches near wild type levels, when gul-1 is inactivated. This is accompanied by morphological changes that include reduced cell wall thickness and restoration of normal chitin levels. We conclude that gul-1 is a mediator of cell wall remodeling within the cot-1 pathway.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation. The carbohydrate analysis was supported in part by the Department of Energy-funded Center for Plant and Microbial Complex Carbohydrates (DE-FG09- 93ER-20097). We thank Dr. Yael Friedmann for her assistance in the TEM analysis.

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  1. Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 7610000, Rehovot, Israel

    Inbal Herold & Oded Yarden

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  1. Inbal Herold
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  2. Oded Yarden
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Correspondence to Oded Yarden.

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Communicated by M. Kupiec.

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Herold, I., Yarden, O. Regulation of Neurospora crassa cell wall remodeling via the cot-1 pathway is mediated by gul-1 . Curr Genet 63, 145–159 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-016-0625-z

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