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Fungal biology

To mate or tomato?

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 13, page 739 (2015)Cite this article

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The mechanistic basis for chemoattraction in plant–fungus interactions has long proved elusive. Turrà et al. found that the activity of three peroxidases — TMP1, TMP2 and CEVI-1 — in tomato plant exudate mediated a chemotropic response in the fungal crop pathogen Fusarium oxysporum. To determine how F. oxysporum processes this chemotropic signal, the authors tested deletion mutants for MAPK pathways. They found that the Mpk1 pathway was required for the fungal response to both plant peroxidase activity and α-pheromone, a fungal mating factor; this was distinct from chemoattraction to nutrients, which relied on the Fmk1 pathway. Surprisingly, the α-pheromone receptor Ste2 was also required for fungal chemoattraction towards the tomato plant, although the ligand that links peroxidase activity to this receptor remains unknown.

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References

  1. Turrà, D. et al. Fungal pathogen uses sex pheromone receptor for chemotropic sensing of host plant signals. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature15516 (2015)

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  1. Naomi Attar
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Attar, N. To mate or tomato?. Nat Rev Microbiol 13, 739 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3590

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