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Involvement of the cysteine protease BcAtg4 in development and virulence of Botrytis cinerea

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Abstract

Autophagy serves as a survival mechanism against starvation and has been reported to be important for cell growth and differentiation in eukaryotes. Here, we investigated the function of a cysteine protease BcAtg4 in the gray mold fungus Botrytis cinerea. Yeast complementation experiments revealed that Bcatg4 can functionally replace the counterpart of yeast. Subcellular localization exhibited that BcAtg4 diffused in cytoplasm at different developmental stages. Targeted gene deletion of Bcatg4 (ΔBcatg4) led to autophagy blocking and a significant retardation in growth and conidiation. In addition, ΔBcatg4 failed to form sclerotia. Infection tests demonstrated that ΔBcatg4 was severely attenuated in virulence on different host plant tissues. All of the phenotypic defects were restored by reintroducing an intact copy of Bcatg4 into ΔBcatg4. These results indicate that Bcatg4 plays multiple roles in the developmental processes and pathogenesis of B. cinerea.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (31672065 and 31801778), China Agriculture Research System (CARS-24-C-01) and Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Plans [PZCZ201715 and  CX(18)2005].

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Author notes

  1. Na Liu and Weichao Ren contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Na Liu & Zhonghua Ma

  2. College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

    Weichao Ren, Fengjie Li & Changjun Chen

Authors
  1. Na Liu
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  2. Weichao Ren
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  3. Fengjie Li
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  4. Changjun Chen
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  5. Zhonghua Ma
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Changjun Chen or Zhonghua Ma.

Additional information

Communicated by M. Kupiec.

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Fig. S1

Generation and identification of Bcatg4 deletion mutant. a Gene replacement strategy of Bcatg4. b Southern blot analysis of Bcatg4 deletion mutant (TIF 1063 KB)

Supplementary material 2 (DOC 36 KB)

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Liu, N., Ren, W., Li, F. et al. Involvement of the cysteine protease BcAtg4 in development and virulence of Botrytis cinerea. Curr Genet 65, 293–300 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-018-0882-0

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