Alternative splicing as an element of signal transduction in multi-step phosphorelay systems of fungi

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The basic mechanisms that enable microorganisms (especiallypathogenic fungi) to "communicate" with their environment or even with their hosts are current research topics. Signal transduction is highly complex and must allow the microorganisms to react with a limited number of signaling proteins to many different stimuli during pathogen/host interactions or pathogen/environmental interactions. The quantity of many different external stimuli must first be percepted and converted by the microorganisms into transportable signals, which can be "processed" by the cell. This is achieved by several sensor proteins via phosphorylation. It is not known how the further signal propagation takes place exactly, since in most pathogenic fungi only one single phosphotransfer protein (Ypd1p) exists for signal transduction of all different signals to the target location within the cell, where they in turn initiate different reactions. In preliminary studies, we could show by means of initial NGS transcription and proteomics data from the phytopathogenic fungus Magnaporthe oryzae that different transcript- and protein-isoforms emerge from the single gene sequence MoYPD1. This results in the hypothesis that different, possibly signal-specific, isoforms of the protein Ypd1p are formed via alternative splicing and these enable a higher variability and specificity in the signal transduction. We want to examine this hypothesis extensively at the genetic and protein biochemical level in the proposed research project.