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Transcriptome Analysis of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum at Different Infection Stages on Brassica napus

Current Microbiology volume 74, pages 1237–1245 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is one of the most important plant pathogens, causing enormous losses in a variety of economically important crops including Brassica napus. The interaction of S. sclerotiorum with its hosts is more complex than initially thought, and still poorly understood. In this study, transcriptome analysis was conducted using S. sclerotiorum RNA from the leaf of B. napus. We mapped 11,074,508 and 11,495,788 paired-end reads. A total of 13,313 genes were obtained and classified according to their functional categories. At 6 h post inoculation (hpi) and 24 hpi, the majority of the upregulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were focused on DNA binding and ATP binding. However, the genes under the category of ion binding and oxidoreductase activity were also activated at 24 hpi. Most of the upregulated DEGs at 48 hpi were classified in the category of hydrolase activity. The expression levels of these genes related to hydrolase function were analyzed. The results showed that different genes were activated at different stages. The relative expression level of parts of interesting genes which were activated during the infection process was evaluated by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Our results provide new insight into the infection mechanism of S. sclerotiorum.

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Acknowledgements

We also thank the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Modern Crop Production (Nanjing, PR China, 210014) and the Corporation of Genepioneer Biotechnologies (Nanjing, PR China, 210014) for their help with the bioinformatics analyses.

Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31301357), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20130719), The Open Project of the Pre-State Key Laboratory for Germplasm Innovation and Resource Utilization of Crops (15KFXM03).

Author Contributions

LCL conception and design of the study, data analysis, draft and critical revision of article, final approval; CS data acquisition, data analysis, draft and critical revision of article, final approval; PQ, XQX data acquisition, draft and critical revision of article, final approval; CF, ZXY, ZW, ZJF, PHM conception and design of the study; draft and critical revision of article, final approval.

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Author notes

  1. Qi Peng and Qingxuan Xie have contributed equally to this study.

Affiliations

  1. Pre-State Key Laboratory for Germplasm Innovation and Resource Utilization of Crops, Changsha, 410128, People’s Republic of China

    Qi Peng, Qingxuan Xie, Ying Ruan & Chunlin Liu

  2. Key Laboratory of Cotton and Rapeseed, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Industrial Crops, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing, 210014, People’s Republic of China

    Qi Peng, Feng Chen, Xiaoying Zhou, Wei Zhang, Jiefu Zhang, Huiming Pu & Song Chen

  3. Provincial Key Laboratory of Agrobiology, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing, 210014, People’s Republic of China

    Qi Peng

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  1. Qi Peng
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Peng, Q., Xie, Q., Chen, F. et al. Transcriptome Analysis of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum at Different Infection Stages on Brassica napus . Curr Microbiol 74, 1237–1245 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-017-1309-8

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