Involvement of BcElp4 in vegetative development, various environmental stress response and virulence of Botrytis cinerea

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Elongator complex consisting of the six Elp1‐Elp6 proteins has been proposed to participate in three distinct cellular processes: transcriptional elongation, polarized exocytosis and formation of modified wobble uridines in tRNA. In this study, we investigated the function of BcElp4 in Botrytis cinerea, which is homologous to S. cerevisiae Elp4. A bcelp4 deletion mutant was significantly impaired in vegetative growth, sclerotia formation and melanin biosynthesis. This mutant exhibited decreased sensitivity to osmotic and oxidative stresses as well as cell way‐damaging agent. Pathogenicity assays revealed that BcElp4 is involved in the virulence of B. cinerea. In addition, the deletion of bcelp4 led to increased aerial mycelia development. All these defects were restored by genetic complementation of the bcelp4 deletion mutant with the wild‐type bcelp4 gene. The results of this study indicated that BcElp4 is involved in regulation of vegetative development, various environmental stress response and virulence in B. cinerea.