Penicillium digitatum is the primary pathogen causing the green mold of citrus. The need for the development of higher effective and lower toxic natural antifungal agents is urgent, owing to the lack of antifungal agents that can successfully combat P. digitatum. Herein, the effects and mechanisms of 2-methoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone (MNQ) as a potential inhibitor of P. digitatumwere studied. First, MNQ showed a significant anti-P. digitatum effect with a minimum inhibitory concentration value of 5.0 μg/mL. Then, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome profiling were performed on the MNQ-treated P. digitatum. A total of 910 genes, 297 proteins, and 174 metabolites changed significantly. The omics analysis indicated that it could be seen that MNQ mainly inhibits the growth of P. digitatum by affecting the synthesis of branched-chain amino acids and cell walls. These findings will be a great contribution to the further understanding of the possible molecular action of MNQ.

Penicillium italicum is the principal pathogen causing blue mold of citrus. Searching for novel antifungal agents is an important aspect of the post-harvest citrus industry because of the lack of higher effective and low toxic antifungal agents. Herein, the effects of 2-methoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone (MNQ) on P. italicum and its mechanism were carried out by a series of methods. MNQ had a significant anti-P. italicum effect with an MIC value of 5.0 µg/mL. The label-free protein profiling under different MNQ conditions identified a total of 3037 proteins in the control group and the treatment group. Among them, there were 129 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs，up-regulated > 2.0-fold or down-regulated < 0.5-fold, p < 0.05), 19 up-regulated proteins, 26 down-regulated proteins, and 67 proteins that were specific for the treatment group and another 17 proteins that were specific for the control group. Of these, 83 proteins were sub-categorized into 23 hierarchically-structured GO classifications. Most of the identified DEPs were involved in molecular function (47%), meanwhile 27% DEPs were involved in the cellular component and 26% DEPs were involved in the biological process. Twenty-eight proteins identified for differential metabolic pathways by KEGG were sub-categorized into 60 classifications. Functional characterization by GO and KEGG enrichment results suggests that the DEPs are mainly related to energy generation (mitochondrial carrier protein, glycoside hydrolase, acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, and ribulose-phosphate 3-epimerase), NADPH supply (enolase, pyruvate carboxylase), oxidative stress (catalase, glutathione synthetase), and pentose phosphate pathway (ribulose-phosphate 3-epimerase and xylulose 5-phosphate). Three of the down-regulated proteins selected randomly the nitro-reductase family protein, mono-oxygenase, and cytochrome P450 were verified using parallel reaction monitoring. These findings illustrated that MNQ may inhibit P. italicum by disrupting the metabolic processes, especially in energy metabolism and stimulus response that are both critical for the growth of the fungus. In conclusion, based on the molecular mechanisms, MNQ can be developed as a potential anti-fungi agent against P. italicum.

Fungi Fusarium proliferatum and the toxins it produces are hazardous to agricultural plants, animals, and human health. The signaling pathways and biotargets of F. proliferatum triggered by MNQ were confirmed in this work.