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Abstract Like other eukaryotes, fungi use MAP kinase (MAPK) pathways to mediate cellular changes responding to external stimuli. In the past two decades, three well-conserved MAP kinase pathways have been characterized in various plant pathogenic fungi for regulating responses and adaptations to a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses encountered during plant infection or survival in nature. The invasive growth (IG) pathway is homologous to the yeast pheromone response and filamentation pathways. In plant pathogens, the IG pathway often is essential for pathogenesis by regulating infection-related morphogenesis, such as appressorium formation, penetration, and invasive growth. The cell wall integrity (CWI) pathway also is important for plant infection although the infection processes it regulates vary among fungal pathogens. Besides its universal function in cell wall integrity, it often plays a minor role in responses to oxidative and cell wall stresses. Both the IG and CWI pathways are involved in regulating known virulence factors as well as effector genes during plant infection and mediating defenses against mycoviruses, bacteria, and other fungi. In contrast, the high osmolarity growth (HOG) pathway is dispensable for virulence in some fungi although it is essential for plant infection in others. It regulates osmoregulation in hyphae and is dispensable for appressorium turgor generation. The HOG pathway also plays a major role for responding to oxidative, heat, and other environmental stresses and is overstimulated by phenylpyrrole fungicides. Moreover, these three MAPK pathways crosstalk and coordinately regulate responses to various biotic and abiotic stresses. The IG and CWI pathways, particularly the latter, also are involved in responding to abiotic stresses to various degrees in different fungal pathogens, and the HOG pathway also plays a role in interactions with other microbes or fungi. Furthermore, some infection processes or stress responses are co-regulated by MAPK pathways with cAMP or Ca 2+ /CaM signaling. Overall, functions of individual MAP kinase pathways in pathogenesis and stress responses have been well characterized in a number of fungal pathogens, showing the conserved genetic elements with diverged functions, likely by rewiring transcriptional regulatory networks. In the near future, applications of genomics and proteomics approaches will likely lead to better understanding of crosstalk among the MAPKs and with other signaling pathways as well as roles of MAPKs in defense against other microbes (biotic interactions).
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Mixed DAMP/MAMP oligosaccharides promote both growth and defense against fungal pathogens of cucumber
ABSTRACT Plants recognize a variety of environmental molecules, thereby triggering appropriate responses to biotic or abiotic stresses. Substances containing microbes-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are representative inducers of pathogen resistance and damage repair, thus treatment of healthy plants with such substances can pre-activate plant immunity and cell repair functions. In this study, the effects of DAMP/MAMP oligosaccharides mixture (Oligo-Mix) derived from plant cell wall (cello-oligosaccharide and xylo-oligosaccharide), and fungal cell wall (chitin-oligosaccharide) were examined in cucumber. Treatment of cucumber with Oligo-Mix promoted root germination and plant growth, along with increased chlorophyll contents in the leaves. Oligo-Mix treatment also induced typical defense responses such as MAP kinase activation and callose deposition in leaves. Pretreatment of Oligo-Mix enhanced disease resistance of cucumber leaves against pathogenic fungiPodosphaera xanthii(powdery mildew) andColletotrichum orbiculare(anthracnose). Oligo-Mix treatment increased the induction of hypersensitive cell death around the infection site of pathogens, which inhibited further infection and the conidial formation of pathogens on the cucumber leaves. RNA-seq analysis revealed that Oligo-Mix treatment upregulated genes associated with plant structural reinforcement, responses to abiotic stresses and plant defense. These results suggested that Oligo-Mix has beneficial effects on growth and disease resistance in cucumber, making it a promising biostimulant for agricultural application.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2235451
- PAR ID:
- 10609128
- Publisher / Repository:
- bioRxiv
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Institution:
- bioRxiv
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Posted Content:
- https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.27.630494
