Lilley, CJ, Maqbool, A, Wu, D et al. (6 more authors) (2018) Effector gene birth in plant parasitic nematodes: Neofunctionalization of a housekeeping glutathione synthetase gene. PLoS genetics, 14 (4). e1007310. ISSN 1553-7390
Abstract
Plant pathogens and parasites are a major threat to global food security. Plant parasitism has arisen four times independently within the phylum Nematoda, resulting in at least one parasite of every major food crop in the world. Some species within the most economically important order (Tylenchida) secrete proteins termed effectors into their host during infection to re-programme host development and immunity. The precise detail of how nematodes evolve new effectors is not clear. Here we reconstruct the evolutionary history of a novel effector gene family. We show that during the evolution of plant parasitism in the Tylenchida,
the housekeeping glutathione synthetase (GS) gene was extensively replicated. New GS paralogues acquired multiple dorsal gland promoter elements, altered spatial expression to the secretory dorsal gland, altered temporal expression to primarily parasitic stages, and gained a signal peptide for secretion. The gene products are delivered into the host plant
cell during infection, giving rise to ªGS-like effectorsº. Remarkably, by solving the structure of GS-like effectors we show that during this process they have also diversified in biochemical activity, and likely represent the founding members of a novel class of GS-like enzyme.
Our results demonstrate the re-purposing of an endogenous housekeeping gene to form a family of effectors with modified functions. We anticipate that our discovery will be a blueprint to understand the evolution of other plant-parasitic nematode effectors, and the foundation
to uncover a novel enzymatic function.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2018 Lilley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Nematode infections; Glutathione; Thiols; Parasitism; Nematoda; Parasite evolution; Plant pathology; Potato |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 18 Apr 2018 10:14 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Public Library of Science |
Identification Number: | 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007310 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:129745 |