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A carnitine–acylcarnitine carrier protein, MoCrc1, is essential for pathogenicity in Magnaporthe oryzae

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Abstract

The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae forms a specialized infection structure called an appressorium to breach the host-plant epidermis for successful infection. In this study, a mutant defective in appressorial penetration was isolated by a mutagenesis approach, in which an exogenous DNA fragment was found to be inserted into the first exon of MoCRC1. This gene encodes a putative carnitine–acylcarnitine carrier protein that is widely conserved among eukaryotic organisms. Deletion of MoCRC1 severely reduces appressorium turgor generation, appressorial penetration, and development of infection hyphae. The null mutant of MoCRC1 lost pathogenicity on intact and abraded host leaves. MoCRC1 was also found to be required for growth on minimal medium containing sodium acetate or olive oil. Moreover, the transformed MoCrc1–eGFP fusion protein was expressed throughout the infection process. Our results suggest that the carnitine–acylcarnitine carrier protein plays vital roles in appressorium-mediated infection and is essential for pathogenesis of M. oryzae and perhaps other phytopathogenic fungi.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professors Tom Hsiang and Paul H. Goodwin at University of Guelph and Larry D. Dunkle at Purdue University for their editorial assistance. This work was supported by a grant from the National Fundamental Basic Research program (2012CB114002) to Y.-L. Peng of the Ministry of Sciences and Technology, China, and by a grant from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation to J. Yang (20100480505).

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We declare that no conflict of interest exists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, China

    Jun Yang & Xingzhong Liu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, China Agricultural University, 100193, Beijing, China

    Jun Yang, Lingan Kong, Xiaolin Chen, Dawei Wang, Linlu Qi, Wensheng Zhao, Yan Zhang & You-Liang Peng

  3. MOA Key Laboratory of Plant Pathology, China Agricultural University, 100193, Beijing, China

    Jun Yang, Lingan Kong, Xiaolin Chen, Dawei Wang, Linlu Qi, Wensheng Zhao, Yan Zhang & You-Liang Peng

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  1. Jun Yang
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  2. Lingan Kong
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xingzhong Liu or You-Liang Peng.

Additional information

Communicated by C. D'Enfert.

Nucleotide sequence data reported are available in the GenBank database under the accession number ADB25056 (MoCRC1).

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Yang, J., Kong, L., Chen, X. et al. A carnitine–acylcarnitine carrier protein, MoCrc1, is essential for pathogenicity in Magnaporthe oryzae . Curr Genet 58, 139–148 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-012-0372-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-012-0372-8

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