PMID:23917633

Citation	Zhang, T, Sun, X, Xu, Q, Candelas, LG and Li, H (2013) The pH signaling transcription factor PacC is required for full virulence in Penicillium digitatum. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 97:9087-98
Abstract	Penicillium digitatum is the most important postharvest pathogen of citrus fruits. Along disease progression, the infected citrus peel tissue is acidified due to the accumulation of organic acids. So far, relatively little is known about the environmental factors that regulate pathogenicity in this fungus. In this study, the role of the pH signaling transcription factor PacC in the pathogenesis of P. digitatum was investigated. We identified the pacC ortholog (PdpacC) in P. digitatum and found that its transcript levels were elevated under alkaline conditions (pH ≥ 7) in vitro, as well as during the infection of citrus fruits in spite of the low pH (about 3.0 to 3.5) of the macerated tissue. Na(+) and pectin also induced the expression of PdpacC. Disruption of PdpacC resulted in impaired mycelial growth under neutral or alkaline pH conditions and on synthetic medium supplemented with pectin as the sole carbon source, and attenuated virulence towards citrus fruits. Introducing the full length of PdpacC into the ΔPdpacC mutant restored all these phenotypes. The expression of the polygalacturonase gene Pdpg2 and pectin lyase gene Pdpnl1 in P. digitatum was upregulated in the wild type strain but not or weakly upregulated in the ΔPdpacC mutant during infection. Disruption of Pdpg2 also resulted in attenuated virulence of P. digitatum towards citrus fruits. Collectively, we conclude that PdPacC plays an important role in pathogenesis of P. digitatum via regulation of the expression of cell wall degradation enzyme genes, such as Pdpg2 and Pdpnl1.
Links	PubMed Online version:10.1007/s00253-013-5129-x
Keywords
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Annotations

Gene product	Qualifier	GO Term	Evidence Code	with/from	Aspect	Extension	Notes	Status
PENDI:J9WUP1	involved_in	GO:0045490: pectin catabolic process	ECO:0000315: mutant phenotype evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
PENDI:J9WUP1		GO:0045490: pectin catabolic process	ECO:0000315:		P		Fig. 5 showing growth on pectin of wt and mutant strain	complete CACAO 8694
PENDI:J9WUP1		GO:0010446: response to alkalinity	ECO:0000315:		P		Fig. 4 showing growth in a range of pH	complete CACAO 8695

References

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