Progress made by the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the study of the pathogenic mechanism of cotton verticillium

Cotton Verticillium Wilt is a soil-transmitted vascular bundle disease that seriously affects the yield and quality of cotton and poses a huge hazard to cotton production. Its main pathogen, Verticillium dahliae, is a soil-borne, semi-living, nutrient filamentous fungus that is mainly colonized in plant vascular bundles. There are currently no effective prevention and control measures. In addition, the biological mechanism of Verticillium dahliae infecting host cotton, secreting virulence factors and causing disease is not known. The collaboration between the team of the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the research team of Shihezi University, Sun Jie, revealed the important role of the V-type myosin 5-mediated secretion device in the interaction between Verticillium dahliae and cotton.

V-type myosin is a motor protein based on a microfilament skeleton. In filamentous fungi, V-type myosin is involved in important physiological processes such as vesicle transport, maintenance of cell morphology, and polar growth of cells. The knockout mutant strain of Verticillium dahliae V-type myosin 5 gene has a serious growth defect compared with the wild-type strain, and the pathogenicity to the host cotton is significantly decreased. However, the infective structure of the mutant strain can still form and successfully invade the host cell. Microscopic observation showed that Myosin5 was localized at the apical end of the mycelium and cell division during the growth of Verticillium dahliae, and regulated the development of conidia and the polar growth process of hyphae by mediating vesicle transport. The secreted proteome data confirmed that the knockout mutant strain has defective secretion ability, indicating that Myosin5 acts as an important component of the secretion device, regulates the secretion of pathogenic factors related to Verticillium dahliae, and interacts with the host plant in Verticillium dahliae. Play an important role in the process. In view of the important role of Myosin5 in the pathogenesis, the future can provide a new target for the prevention and control of cotton verticillium.

The relevant research results are published in the international academic journal Environmental Microbiology (doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.14101). Feng Zhaodi, a visiting doctoral student of Kong Zhaosheng's research group, is the first author, and Kong Zhaosheng and Sun Jie are co-authors. The research was funded by the National Key R&D Program (2017YFD0200600), the Chinese Academy of Sciences “Hundred Talents Program” Start-up Fund and the National Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics.