Abstract
Plants and animals rely on cytoplasmic immune receptors of the NLR family to cope with a variety of biotic challenges. Proteins homologous to plant and animal NLRs were identified in fungi as part of the study of a non-self recognition and programmed cell death process known as heterokaryon incompatibility. We review the role of characterized NLR-type proteins in incompatibility in the three fungal species Podospora anserina, Cryphonectria parasitica, and Neurospora crassa and describe the phylogenetic distribution, domain architecture, and variability of the NLR gene repertoires in fungal genomes. We describe a specific type of NLR-mediated signal transduction process based on amyloid templating. We review the direct and indirect evidence suggesting that in general terms NLR-like proteins might also function as immune receptors in the fungal branch as they do in plant and animal lineages and discuss these implications in terms of the evolutionary trajectory of NLR genes.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Corinne Clavé for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported in part by the National Science Centre of Poland (grant no. 2015/17/D/ST6/04054) and an ANR grant (SFAS, ANR-17-CE11-0035-01). AD was supported by a Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under the US Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
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Daskalov, A., Dyrka, W., Saupe, S.J. (2020). NLR Function in Fungi as Revealed by the Study of Self/Non-self Recognition Systems. In: Benz, J.P., Schipper, K. (eds) Genetics and Biotechnology. The Mycota, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49924-2_6
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