Evolution and functional characterization of virulent strain-specific genes in Colletotrichum

了解病原体的毒力如何产生有助于开发更好的疾病控制方法。我们在炭疽菌真菌中发现了一个毒力强的菌株特异性基因簇，该基因簇在多个物种中具有不均匀的系统发育分布。2020财年，主要实现以下目标：提交的论文描述了亚端粒区和富含重复的染色体中潜在的毒力基因簇。这项工作以及相关的基因组和转录组数据已在NCBI、github和Biorxiv上公开发布，目前正在《基因组研究》杂志上进行审查。潜在毒力基因簇中存在的一种蛋白质CfNudix进一步被表征。对包括CfNudix在内的所有fruticola ndixes进行系统发育分析，确定最密切相关的序列，通过与已有鉴定的ndixes同源性鉴定潜在的底物。纯化后的CfNudix在已知的nudix底物上进行底物特异性测试。

Understanding how virulence emerges in pathogens can contribute to the development of better methods of disease control. We discovered a virulent strain-specific cluster of genes in Colletotrichum fungi which cause strawberry anthracnose that has an uneven phylogenetic distribution across multiple species. In FY2020, the following was achieved:1. Submitted paper describing potential virulence gene clusters in sub-telomeric regions and repeat-rich chromosomes. The work and associated genome and transcriptome data has been publicly released on NCBI, github and Biorxiv and is currently under review in the journal Genome Research.2. One of the proteins present in the potential virulence gene cluster, CfNudix, was characterized further. Phylogenetic analyses of all C. fructicola nudixes including CfNudix was carried out to determine the most closely related sequences to identify potential substrates by homology to previously characterized nudixes. The substrate specificity of purified CfNudix was tested on known nudix substrates.