The biotrophic development of Ustilago maydis studied by RNA-seq analysis

Item Type:	Article
Title:	The biotrophic development of Ustilago maydis studied by RNA-seq analysis
Creators Name:	Lanver, D. and Müller, A.N. and Happel, P. and Schweizer, G. and Haas, F.B. and Franitza, M. and Pellegrin, C. and Reissmann, S. and Altmüller, J. and Rensing, S.A. and Kahmann, R.
Abstract:	The maize smut fungus Ustilago maydis is a model organism for elucidating host colonization strategies of biotrophic fungi. Here, we performed an in depth transcriptional profiling of the entire plant-associated development of U. maydis wild-type strains. In our analysis, we focused on fungal metabolism, nutritional strategies, secreted effectors, and regulatory networks. Secreted proteins were enriched in three distinct expression modules corresponding to stages on the plant surface, establishment of biotrophy, and induction of tumors. These modules are likely the key determinants for U. maydis virulence. With respect to nutrient utilization, we observed that expression of several nutrient transporters was tied to these virulence modules rather than being controlled by nutrient availability. We show that oligopeptide transporters likely involved in nitrogen assimilation are important virulence factors. By measuring the intramodular connectivity of transcription factors, we identified the potential drivers for the virulence modules. While known components of the b-mating type cascade emerged as inducers for the plant surface and biotrophy module, we identified a set of yet uncharacterized transcription factors as likely responsible for expression of the tumor module. We demonstrate a crucial role for leaf tumor formation and effector gene expression for one of these transcription factors.
Keywords:	Biomass, Fungal Proteins, Gene Expression Profiling, Membrane Transport Proteins, Nitrogen, Plant Diseases, Plant Tumors, RNA Sequence Analysis, Transcription Factors, Transcriptome, Ustilago, Virulence, Virulence Factors, Zea Mays / Microbiology
Source:	Plant Cell
ISSN:	1040-4651
Publisher:	American Society of Plant Biologists
Volume:	30
Number:	2
Page Range:	300-323
Date:	February 2018
Additional Information:	© 2018 American Society of Plant Biologists. All rights reserved. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of American Society of Plant Biologists. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Official Publication:	https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00764
PubMed:	View item in PubMed

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