Comparative genomic and transcriptional analyses of the carbohydrate-active enzymes and secretomes of phytopathogenic fungi reveal their significant roles during infection and development

Our comparative genomic analysis showed that the numbers of plant cell wall (PCW)- and fungal cell wall (FCW)-degradation-associated carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) in necrotrophic and hemibiotrophic fungi are significantly larger than that in most biotrophic fungi. However, our transcriptional analyses of CAZyme-encoding genes in Melampsora larici-populina, Puccinia graminis and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum showed that many genes encoding PCW- and FCW-degradation-associated CAZymes were significantly up-regulated during the infection of both necrotrophic fungi and biotrophic fungi, indicating an existence of a universal mechanism underlying PCW degradation and FCW reorganization or modification, which are both intimately involved in necrotrophic and biotrophic fungal infection. Furthermore, our results showed that the FCW reorganization or modification was also related to the fungal development. Additionally, our transcriptional analysis of the secretome of S. sclerotiorum showed that many secreted protein-encoding genes were dramatically induced during infection. Among them, a small, cysteine-rich protein SsCVNH was experimentally confirmed to be essential for the virulence and sclerotial development, indicating that the small secreted proteins might also play crucial roles as potential effectors in host-non-specific necrotrophic fungi.