We investigated the mechanism of resistance to demethylation inhibitors (DMI) in Penicillium digitatum by isolating the CYP51 gene, which encodes the target enzyme (P450 14DM ) of DMI, from three DMI-resistant and three DMI-sensitive strains. The structural genes of all six strains were identical, but in the promoter region, a unique 126-bp sequence was tandemly repeated five times in the DMI-resistant strains and was present only once in the DMI-sensitive strains. Constitutive expression of CYP51 in the resistant strains was about 100-fold higher than that in the sensitive strains. We introduced CYP51, including the promoter region, from a DMI-resistant strain into a DMI-sensitive strain, which rendered the transformants DMI resistant and increased CYP51 expression. We also found that if the number of copies of the repeat was reduced to two, resistance and CYP51 expression also decreased. These results indicate that the 126-bp unit acts as a transcriptional enhancer and that a tandem repeat of the unit enhances CYP51 expression, resulting in DMI resistance. This is a new fungicide resistance mechanism for filamentous fungi.Demethylation inhibitors (DMIs) are widely used as fungicides in agriculture and medicine. In the 1970s, the development of resistance to DMI fungicides under practical conditions was thought to be unlikely (9, 16). However, in practice, DMI-resistant strains occur widely in several important plant and animal pathogens, such as Erysiphe graminis, Sphaerotheca fuliginea, Pyrenophora teres (12), and Candida albicans (11), causing acute problems in crop production and in the treatment of candidiasis of AIDS patients. Determining the mechanism of resistance is, therefore, quite important.We previously showed that an ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter gene, PMR1, is involved in DMI resistance in Penicillium digitatum by disrupting the PMR1 gene and concomitantly increasing sensitivity to DMI fungicides (21). PMR1 expression is strongly induced by fungicide treatment in both DMI-sensitive and DMI-resistant strains, but the constitutive expression level of PMR1 in the resistant strain was relatively higher than that in the sensitive strain (21). ABC transportermediated resistance to toxicants in yeast and human cells is a consequence of increased constitutive expression of the ABC transporter gene (3, 7), so we thought that the higher level of constitutive expression of the PMR1 gene could be responsible for the higher DMI resistance of the resistant strains. However, introduction of the PMR1 coding region under the control of a strong constitutive promoter, PgpdA, into a DMIsensitive strain had no observable effect on DMI resistance (H. Hamamoto, O. Nawata, K. Hasegawa, R. Nakaune, Y. J. Lee, Y. Makizumi, K. Akutsu, and T. Hibi, submitted for publication), suggesting that the constitutive expression level of PMR1 is not the determinative factor for DMI resistance. The coding sequences of this gene from three DMI-sensitive and three DMI-resistant strains were also identical. These results sugges...
Demethylation inhibitor (DMI)-resistant strains of the plant pathogenic fungus Penicillium digitatum were shown to be simultaneously resistant to cycloheximide, 4-nitroquinoline-N-oxide (4NQO), and acriflavine. APMR1 (Penicillium multidrug resistance) gene encoding an ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter (P-glycoprotein) was cloned from a genomic DNA library of a DMI-resistant strain (LC2) ofPenicillium digitatum by heterologous hybridization with a DNA fragment containing an ABC-encoding region from Botrytis cinerea. Sequence analysis revealed significant amino acid homology to the primary structures of PMR1 (protein encoded by thePMR1 gene) and ABC transporters of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (PDR5 and SNQ2), Schizosaccharomyces pombe(HBA2), Candida albicans (CDR1), and Aspergillus nidulans (AtrA and AtrB). Disruption of the PMR1 gene of P. digitatum DMI-resistant strain LC2 demonstrated that PMR1 was an important determinant of resistance to DMIs. The effective concentrations inhibiting radial growth by 50% (EC50s) and the MICs of fenarimol and bitertanol for the PMR1disruptants (螖pmr1 mutants) were equivalent to those for DMI-sensitive strains. Northern blot analysis indicated that severalfold more PMR1 transcript accumulated in the DMI-resistant strains compared with those in DMI-sensitive strains in the absence of fungicide. In both DMI-resistant and -sensitive strains, transcription of PMR1 was strongly enhanced within 10 min after treatment with the DMI fungicide triflumizole. These results suggested that the toxicant efflux system comprised of PMR1 participates directly in the DMI resistance of the fungus.
A rice chitinase cDNA (RCC2) driven by the CaMV 35S promoter was introduced into cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) through Agrobacterium mediation. More than 200 putative transgenic shoots were regenerated and grown on MS medium supplemented with 100 mg/l kanamycin. Sixty elongated shoots were examined for the presence of the integrated RCC2 gene and subsequently confirmed to have it. Of these, 20 were tested for resistance against gray mold (Botrytis cinerea) by infection with the conidia: 15 strains out of the 20 independent shoots exhibited a higher resistance than the control (non-transgenic plants). Three transgenic cucumber strains (designated CR29, CR32 and CR33) showed the highest resistance against B. cinerea: the spread of disease was inhibited completely in these strains. Chitinase gene expression in highly resistant transgenic strains (CR32 and CR33) was compared to that of a susceptible transgenic strain (CR20) and a control. Different responses for disease resistance were observed among the highly resistant strains. CR33 inhibited appressoria formation and penetration of hyphae. Although CR32 permitted penetration of hyphae, invasion of the infection hyphae was restricted. Furthermore, progenies of CR32 showed a segregation ratio of 3:1 (resistant:susceptible). As the disease resistance against gray mold was confirmed to be inheritable, these highly resistant transgenic cucumber strains would serve as good breeding materials for disease resistance.
Cyclamen plants were treated with a highly chitinolytic bacterium, Serratia marcescens strain B2, and then challenge inoculated with Rhizoctonia solani sclerotia or Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cyclaminis conidia. The bacterium suppressed these fungal diseases of cyclamen plants, especially the damping off caused by R. solani, in a greenhouse. Strain B2 survived at approximately 106 to 107 CFU/g in soil for 4 months after the initial application under greenhouse conditions. Chitinolytic enzymes and antifungal low-molecular-weight compounds were present in filtrates of S. marcescens B2, which suppressed germination of R. solani sclerotia in vitro.
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