Small RNA bidirectional crosstalk during the interaction between wheat andZymoseptoria tritici

Abstract

20Cross-kingdom RNAi has been shown to play important roles during plant pathogen 21interactions. But this cross-kingdom RNAi was still unexplored in the wheat-Zymoseptoria 22 tritici pathosystem. Here we performed a detailed analysis of the sRNA bidirectional crosstalk 23 between wheat and Z. tritici. Using a combination of sRNA-seq and mRNA-seq we were able 24to identify known and novel sRNAs and study their expression and their action on putative 25 targets in both wheat and Z. tritici. We predicted the target genes of all the sRNAs in either 26 wheat or Z. tritici transcriptome and used degradome analysis to validate the cleavage of these 27 gene transcripts. We could not find any clear evidence of a cross-kingdom RNAi in this 28pathosystem. We also found that the fungal sRNA enrichment was lower in planta than during 29 in vitro growth, probably due to the lower expression of the only Dicer gene of the fungus 30 during plant infection. However, we found a downregulation of specific wheat sRNAs during 31 the fungal infection, leading to a boost expression of wheat defense related genes, which may 32 be enhancing the plant defense ability against the pathogen. Additionally, the fungal infection 33 also induced sRNAs regulating the expression of specific wheat genes, including auxin related 34 genes, as an immune response. These results confirm the role of sRNAs in the regulation of 35wheat defenses during Z. tritici infection. Our findings contribute to improve our understanding 36 of the interactions between wheat and Z. tritici. 37 38 process in fungi, called quelling, was found in Neurospora crassa.

Small RNA Bidirectional Crosstalk During the Interaction Between Wheat and Zymoseptoria tritici

“…We are also very grateful to Dr. Nicolas Bologna, Dr. Thomas Grentzinger, and Dr. Alexis Sarazin for their suggestions and for the interesting scientific discussions related to this project. This manuscript has been released as a preprint at BioRxiv (Ma et al, 2018a).…”

MicroRNAs in Vitis vinifera cv. Chardonnay Are Differentially Expressed in Response to Diaporthe Species

“…Ma et al [58] also found that the fungal sRNA enrichment was lower in planta than during in vitro growth. In this study, we used the cultivar Chardonnay since it is a popular grapevine cultivar all around the world [59], and in previous research, it showed a high level of tolerance against natural infections of GTD pathogens in Italy [60,61].…”