Botrytis cinereavirulence factors: new insights into a necrotrophic and polyphageous pathogen

Abstract

Botrytis cinerea is responsible for the gray mold disease on more than 200 host plants. This necrotrophic ascomycete displays the capacity to kill host cells through the production of toxins, reactive oxygen species and the induction of a plant-produced oxidative burst. Thanks to an arsenal of degrading enzymes, B. cinerea is then able to feed on different plant tissues. Recent molecular approaches, for example on characterizing components of signal transduction pathways, show that this fungus shares conserved virulence factors with other phytopathogens, but also highlight some Botrytis-specific features. The discovery of some first strain-specific virulence factors, together with population data, even suggests a possible host adaptation of the strains. The availability of the genome sequence now stimulates the development of high-throughput functional analysis to decipher the mechanisms involved in the large host range of this species.

Plastic Transcriptomes Stabilize Immunity to Pathogen Diversity: The Jasmonic Acid and Salicylic Acid Networks within the Arabidopsis/Botrytis Pathosystem

“…This suggests that this collection of B. cinerea genotypes does not contain large-effect qualitative virulence loci; instead, this generalist uses a highly polygenic virulence architecture (Denby et al, 2004;Finkers et al, 2007b;Rowe and Kliebenstein, 2008;Corwin et al, 2016b;Zhang et al, 2016). This agrees with previous B. cinerea mechanistic studies that identify a large collection of standing genetic variation that controls a wide range of specific virulence mechanisms (Choquer et al, 2007;Rowe and Kliebenstein, 2007;Noda et al, 2010;Rowe et al, 2010;Dalmais et al, 2011;Michielse et al, 2011;Shlezinger et al, 2011;Windram et al, 2012;Pearson and Bailey, 2013;Kumari et al, 2014;An et al, 2015;Atwell et al, 2015;Hevia et al, 2015;Plaza et al, 2015;Schumacher et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2015a;Corwin et al, 2016aCorwin et al, , 2016bLopezCruz et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2016). Taken together, this supports the perspective that the Arabidopsis-B.…”

Schizophyllum commune as a Ubiquitous Plant Parasite

“…The aggressiveness and omnivory of S. commune are unique among wood-rot basidiomycetes. In the case of Botrytis cinerea, an omnivorous plantpathogenic ascomycete of necrotrophic nature, the resistance to oxygenic stresses and the high productivity of polygalacturonase are known as important pathogenicity factors 9 . Similarly, some isolates of S. commune can produce polygalacturonase more abundantly than many other wood-rot basidiomycetes 64 .…”

Expression of a fungal endochitinase gene in transgenic tomato and tobacco results in enhanced tolerance to fungal pathogens

“…The pathogens used in this study are not typical pathogens of tobacco, but cause necrotic lesions on the leaves. B. cinerea is a fungal pathogen that infects a wide range of hosts (Choquer et al, 2007), affecting different organs including leaves, stems, flowers and fruits (Hoeberichts et al, 2003;Lorbiecke and Sauter, 1998). Early blight is a major fungal disease in tomato and is caused by Alternaria solani.…”