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Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides

Fungicide resistance is a serious problem for agriculture. This is particularly apparent in the case of powdery mildew fungi. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new agrochemicals. Chitin is a well-known elicitor of plant immunity, and fungal pathogens have evolved strategies to overcome i...

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Autores principales: Martínez-Cruz, Jesús M., Polonio, Álvaro, Zanni, Riccardo, Romero, Diego, Gálvez, Jorge, Fernández-Ortuño, Dolores, Pérez-García, Alejandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706340/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34946992
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jof7121009
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author Martínez-Cruz, Jesús M.
Polonio, Álvaro
Zanni, Riccardo
Romero, Diego
Gálvez, Jorge
Fernández-Ortuño, Dolores
Pérez-García, Alejandro
author_facet Martínez-Cruz, Jesús M.
Polonio, Álvaro
Zanni, Riccardo
Romero, Diego
Gálvez, Jorge
Fernández-Ortuño, Dolores
Pérez-García, Alejandro
author_sort Martínez-Cruz, Jesús M.
collection PubMed
description Fungicide resistance is a serious problem for agriculture. This is particularly apparent in the case of powdery mildew fungi. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new agrochemicals. Chitin is a well-known elicitor of plant immunity, and fungal pathogens have evolved strategies to overcome its detection. Among these strategies, chitin deacetylase (CDA) is responsible for modifying immunogenic chitooligomers and hydrolysing the acetamido group in the N-acetylglucosamine units to avoid recognition. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that CDA can be an appropriate target for antifungals using the cucurbit powdery mildew pathogen Podosphaera xanthii. According to our hypothesis, RNAi silencing of PxCDA resulted in a dramatic reduction in fungal growth that was linked to a rapid elicitation of chitin-triggered immunity. Similar results were obtained with treatments with carboxylic acids such as EDTA, a well-known CDA inhibitor. The disease-suppression activity of EDTA was not associated with its chelating activity since other chelating agents did not suppress disease. The binding of EDTA to CDA was confirmed by molecular docking studies. Furthermore, EDTA also suppressed green and grey mould-causing pathogens applied to oranges and strawberries, respectively. Our results conclusively show that CDA is a promising target for control of phytopathogenic fungi and that EDTA could be a starting point for fungicide design.
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spelling pubmed-87063402021-12-25 Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides Martínez-Cruz, Jesús M. Polonio, Álvaro Zanni, Riccardo Romero, Diego Gálvez, Jorge Fernández-Ortuño, Dolores Pérez-García, Alejandro J Fungi (Basel) Article Fungicide resistance is a serious problem for agriculture. This is particularly apparent in the case of powdery mildew fungi. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new agrochemicals. Chitin is a well-known elicitor of plant immunity, and fungal pathogens have evolved strategies to overcome its detection. Among these strategies, chitin deacetylase (CDA) is responsible for modifying immunogenic chitooligomers and hydrolysing the acetamido group in the N-acetylglucosamine units to avoid recognition. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that CDA can be an appropriate target for antifungals using the cucurbit powdery mildew pathogen Podosphaera xanthii. According to our hypothesis, RNAi silencing of PxCDA resulted in a dramatic reduction in fungal growth that was linked to a rapid elicitation of chitin-triggered immunity. Similar results were obtained with treatments with carboxylic acids such as EDTA, a well-known CDA inhibitor. The disease-suppression activity of EDTA was not associated with its chelating activity since other chelating agents did not suppress disease. The binding of EDTA to CDA was confirmed by molecular docking studies. Furthermore, EDTA also suppressed green and grey mould-causing pathogens applied to oranges and strawberries, respectively. Our results conclusively show that CDA is a promising target for control of phytopathogenic fungi and that EDTA could be a starting point for fungicide design. MDPI 2021-11-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8706340/ /pubmed/34946992 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jof7121009 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Martínez-Cruz, Jesús M.
Polonio, Álvaro
Zanni, Riccardo
Romero, Diego
Gálvez, Jorge
Fernández-Ortuño, Dolores
Pérez-García, Alejandro
Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides
title Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides
title_full Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides
title_fullStr Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides
title_full_unstemmed Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides
title_short Chitin Deacetylase, a Novel Target for the Design of Agricultural Fungicides
title_sort chitin deacetylase, a novel target for the design of agricultural fungicides
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706340/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34946992
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jof7121009
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