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Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits

Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) drive developmental and cellular differentiation, and variation in their architectures gives rise to morphological diversity. Pioneering studies in Aspergillus fungi, coupled with subsequent work in other filamentous fungi, have shown that the GRN governed by the BrlA...

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Autores principales: Mead, Matthew E, Borowsky, Alexander T, Joehnk, Bastian, Steenwyk, Jacob L, Shen, Xing-Xing, Sil, Anita, Rokas, Antonis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7531577/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32442273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaa107
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author Mead, Matthew E
Borowsky, Alexander T
Joehnk, Bastian
Steenwyk, Jacob L
Shen, Xing-Xing
Sil, Anita
Rokas, Antonis
author_facet Mead, Matthew E
Borowsky, Alexander T
Joehnk, Bastian
Steenwyk, Jacob L
Shen, Xing-Xing
Sil, Anita
Rokas, Antonis
author_sort Mead, Matthew E
collection PubMed
description Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) drive developmental and cellular differentiation, and variation in their architectures gives rise to morphological diversity. Pioneering studies in Aspergillus fungi, coupled with subsequent work in other filamentous fungi, have shown that the GRN governed by the BrlA, AbaA, and WetA proteins controls the development of the asexual fruiting body or conidiophore. A specific aspect of conidiophore development is the production of phialides, conidiophore structures that are under the developmental control of AbaA and function to repetitively generate spores. Fungal genome sequencing has revealed that some filamentous fungi lack abaA, and also produce asexual structures that lack phialides, raising the hypothesis that abaA loss is functionally linked to diversity in asexual fruiting body morphology. To examine this hypothesis, we carried out an extensive search for the abaA gene across 241 genomes of species from the fungal subphylum Pezizomycotina. We found that abaA was independently lost in four lineages of Eurotiomycetes, including from all sequenced species within the order Onygenales, and that all four lineages that have lost abaA also lack the ability to form phialides. Genetic restoration of abaA from Aspergillus nidulans into Histoplasma capsulatum, a pathogenic species from the order Onygenales that lacks an endogenous copy of abaA, did not alter Histoplasma conidiation morphology but resulted in a marked increase in spore viability. We also discovered that species lacking abaA contain fewer AbaA binding motifs in the regulatory regions of orthologs of some AbaA target genes, suggesting that the asexual fruiting body GRN of organisms that have lost abaA has likely been rewired. Our results provide an illustration of how repeated losses of a key regulatory transcription factor have contributed to the diversity of an iconic fungal morphological trait.
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spelling pubmed-75315772020-10-07 Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits Mead, Matthew E Borowsky, Alexander T Joehnk, Bastian Steenwyk, Jacob L Shen, Xing-Xing Sil, Anita Rokas, Antonis Genome Biol Evol Research Article Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) drive developmental and cellular differentiation, and variation in their architectures gives rise to morphological diversity. Pioneering studies in Aspergillus fungi, coupled with subsequent work in other filamentous fungi, have shown that the GRN governed by the BrlA, AbaA, and WetA proteins controls the development of the asexual fruiting body or conidiophore. A specific aspect of conidiophore development is the production of phialides, conidiophore structures that are under the developmental control of AbaA and function to repetitively generate spores. Fungal genome sequencing has revealed that some filamentous fungi lack abaA, and also produce asexual structures that lack phialides, raising the hypothesis that abaA loss is functionally linked to diversity in asexual fruiting body morphology. To examine this hypothesis, we carried out an extensive search for the abaA gene across 241 genomes of species from the fungal subphylum Pezizomycotina. We found that abaA was independently lost in four lineages of Eurotiomycetes, including from all sequenced species within the order Onygenales, and that all four lineages that have lost abaA also lack the ability to form phialides. Genetic restoration of abaA from Aspergillus nidulans into Histoplasma capsulatum, a pathogenic species from the order Onygenales that lacks an endogenous copy of abaA, did not alter Histoplasma conidiation morphology but resulted in a marked increase in spore viability. We also discovered that species lacking abaA contain fewer AbaA binding motifs in the regulatory regions of orthologs of some AbaA target genes, suggesting that the asexual fruiting body GRN of organisms that have lost abaA has likely been rewired. Our results provide an illustration of how repeated losses of a key regulatory transcription factor have contributed to the diversity of an iconic fungal morphological trait. Oxford University Press 2020-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7531577/ /pubmed/32442273 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaa107 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Research Article
Mead, Matthew E
Borowsky, Alexander T
Joehnk, Bastian
Steenwyk, Jacob L
Shen, Xing-Xing
Sil, Anita
Rokas, Antonis
Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits
title Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits
title_full Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits
title_fullStr Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits
title_full_unstemmed Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits
title_short Recurrent Loss of abaA, a Master Regulator of Asexual Development in Filamentous Fungi, Correlates with Changes in Genomic and Morphological Traits
title_sort recurrent loss of abaa, a master regulator of asexual development in filamentous fungi, correlates with changes in genomic and morphological traits
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7531577/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32442273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaa107
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