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Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici is the casual organism of tomato wilt disease which is a devastating plant pathogen responsible for annual loss of this fruit crop. An important step in fungal growth and development is germination, that is transformation of dormant spores into a growing hypha. For this, a set of special type of enzymes known as CAZymes are required for construction and remodelling of polysaccharides and penetration into the host. This necessitates to understand the underlying mechanism of hyphal growth and the crucial CAZymes involved in the process. Therefore, a comparative transcriptomic study of F. oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici using publically available RNA‐seq data under two perturbed conditions was taken up to find out the core differentially expressed genes (DEGs) followed by CAZyme annotation and their co‐expression. Among these two perturbations, 514 core DEGs were found, from which 32 CAZymes were annotated, with majority of them being glycosyl hydrolases and glycosyl transferases. Most of these CAzymes were also found to be downregulated in both the stresses. Further, among these annotated DEGs, the interaction network revealed the association of CAZymes with zinc finger transcription factors, enzymes associated with fatty acid biosynthesis, and sulphur and citrate metabolism. Hence, in the present study, the key or core CAZymes and their association with other enzymes were revealed in the impaired fungus which are otherwise crucial for growth in normal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhizopus delemar, an opportunistic fungal pathogen, causes a highly fatal disease, mucormycosis. Spore germination is a crucial mechanism for disease pathogenesis. Thus, exploring the molecular mechanisms of fungal germination would underpin our knowledge of such transformation and, in turn, help control mucormycosis. To gain insight into the developmental process particularly associated with cell wall modification and synthesis, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was performed including both coding and non-coding transcripts identified in the current study, to find out the module of interest in the germination stages. The module-trait relationship identified a particular module to have a high correlation only at the resting phase and further analysis revealed the module to be enriched for protein phosphorylation, carbohydrate metabolic process, and cellular response to stimulus. Moreover, co-expression network analysis of highly connected nodes revealed cell wall modifying enzymes, especially those involved in mannosylation, chitin-glucan crosslinking, and polygalacturonase activities co-expressing and interacting with the novel lncRNAs among which some of them predicted to be endogenous target mimic (eTM) lncRNAs. Hence, the present study provides an insight into the onset of spore germination and the information on the novel non-coding transcripts with key cell wall–related enzymes as potential targets against mucormycosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the third most popular Poaceae crop after wheat and rice and used in feed and pharmaceutical sectors. The maize silk contains bioactive components explored by traditional Chinese herbal medicine for various pharmacological activities. However, Fusarium graminearum, Fusarium verticillioides, Trichoderma atroviride, and Ustilago maydis can infect the maize, produce mycotoxins, hamper the quantity and quality of silk production, and further harm the primary consumer's health. However, the defense mechanism is not fully understood in multiple fungal infections in the silk of Z. mays. In this study, we applied bioinformatics approaches to use the publicly available transcriptome data of Z. mays silk affected by multiple fungal flora to identify core genes involved in combatting disease response. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified among intra- and inter-transcriptome data sets of control versus infected Z. mays silks. Upon further comparison between up- and downregulated genes within the control of datasets, 4,519 upregulated and 5,125 downregulated genes were found. The DEGs have been compared with genes in the modules of weighted gene co-expression network analysis to relevant specific traits towards identifying core genes. The expression pattern of transcription factors, carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZyme), and resistance genes was analyzed. The present investigation is supportive of our findings that the gene ontology, immunity stimulus, and resistance genes are upregulated, but physical and metabolic processes such as cell wall organizations and pectin synthesis were downregulated respectively. Our results are indicative that terpene synthase TPS6 and TPS11 are involved in the defense mechanism against fungal infections in maize silk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]