4.6 Article

Deacetylation of chitin oligomers increases virulence in soil-borne fungal pathogens

Journal

NATURE PLANTS
Volume 5, Issue 11, Pages 1167-+

Publisher

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41477-019-0527-4

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Funding

  1. Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDB11040500]
  2. National Natural Science Foundation of China [31730078, 31460451, 31560494]

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Soil-borne fungal pathogens that cause crop disease are major threats to agriculture worldwide. Here, we identified a secretory polysaccharide deacetylase (PDA1) from the soil-borne fungus Verticillium dahliae, the most notorious plant pathogen of the Verticillium genus, that facilitates virulence through direct deacetylation of chitin oligomers whose N-acetyl group contributes to host lysine motif (LysM)-containing receptor perception for ligand-triggered immunity. Polysaccharide deacetylases are widely present in fungi, bacteria, insects and marine invertebrates and have been reported to possess diverse functions in developmental processes rather than virulence. A phylogenetics analysis of more than 5,000 fungal proteins with conserved polysaccharide deacetylase domains showed that the V. dahliae PDA1-containing subtree includes a large number of proteins from the Verticillium genus as well as the Fusarium genus, another group of characterized soil-borne fungal pathogens, suggesting that soil-borne fungal pathogens have adopted chitin deacetylation as a major virulence strategy. We showed that a Fusarium PDA1 is required for virulence in cotton plants. This study reveals a substantial virulence function role of polysaccharide deacetylases in pathogenic fungi and demonstrates a subtle mechanism whereby deacetylation of chitin oligomers converts them to ligand-inactive chitosan, representing a common strategy of preventing chitin-triggered host immunity by soil-borne fungal pathogens.

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