Circadian oscillations in Trichoderma atroviride and the role of core clock components in secondary metabolism, development, and mycoparasitism against the phytopathogen Botrytis cinerea
- Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
- Millennium Institute for Integrative Biology, Chile
- Cinvestav Unidad Irapuato, Mexico
- Unidad de Genómica Avanzada - Langebio, Mexico
- Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile
Abstract
Circadian clocks are important for an individual’s fitness, and recent studies have underlined their role in the outcome of biological interactions. However, the relevance of circadian clocks in fungal-fungal interactions remains largely unexplored. We sought to characterize a functional clock in the biocontrol agent Trichoderma atroviride to assess its importance in the mycoparasitic interaction against the phytopathogen Botrytis cinerea. By utilizing luciferase reporters to monitor the T. atroviride core-clock, we confirmed the existence of circadian oscillations of ~26h that are temperature-compensated and modulated by environmental cues such as light and temperature. Notably, the presence of such rhythms appears to be highly dependent on the nutritional composition of the media. Heterologous expression of the T. atroviride negative clock component (tafrq) in a clock null (Δfrq) strain of Neurospora crassa restored core clock function in the latter fungus, with the same period observed in T. atroviride, confirming the role of tafrq as a bona fide core-clock component. Confrontation assays between wild-type and clock mutant strains of T. atroviride and B. cinerea, in constant light or darkness, revealed an inhibitory effect of light on T. atroviride's mycoparasitic capabilities. Interestingly, when confrontation assays were performed under light/dark cycles, T. atroviride's overgrowth capacity was enhanced when inoculations were at dawn compared to dusk. Deleting the core-clock negative element FRQ in B. cinerea, but not in T. atroviride, was vital for the daily differential phenotype, suggesting that the B. cinerea clock has a more significant influence on the result of this interaction. Additionally, we observed that T. atroviride clock components modulate development and secondary metabolism in this fungus, affecting the production of several molecules, including volatile compounds, such as 6-pentyl-α-pyrone (6-PP). Notably, we detected the rhythmic production of distinct T. atroviride volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which depended on its circadian clock. Thus, this study provides evidence on how clock components impact diverse aspects of T. atroviride lifestyle and how daily changes modulate fungal interactions and dynamics.
Data availability
All data generated and analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1 and 2 and Table 1.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (FONDECYT Regular 1211715)
- Luis F Larrondo
Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (FONDECYT Postdoc 3180328)
- Aldo Seguel-Avello
Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (FONDECYT Postdoc 3190628)
- Consuelo Olivares-Yánez
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (the International Research Scholar program)
- Luis F Larrondo
Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Millennium Science Initiative Program - Millennium Institute for Integrative Biology (iBio ICN17_022)
- Paulo Canessa
- Luis F Larrondo
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Henríquez-Urrutia et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,457
- views
-
- 377
- downloads
-
- 17
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Circadian oscillations in Trichoderma atroviride and the role of core clock components in secondary metabolism, development, and mycoparasitism against the phytopathogen Botrytis cinerea
eLife 11:e71358.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71358
Further reading
-
- Cell Biology
- Evolutionary Biology
Maintenance of rod-shape in bacterial cells depends on the actin-like protein MreB. Deletion of mreB from Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 results in viable spherical cells of variable volume and reduced fitness. Using a combination of time-resolved microscopy and biochemical assay of peptidoglycan synthesis, we show that reduced fitness is a consequence of perturbed cell size homeostasis that arises primarily from differential growth of daughter cells. A 1000-generation selection experiment resulted in rapid restoration of fitness with derived cells retaining spherical shape. Mutations in the peptidoglycan synthesis protein Pbp1A were identified as the main route for evolutionary rescue with genetic reconstructions demonstrating causality. Compensatory pbp1A mutations that targeted transpeptidase activity enhanced homogeneity of cell wall synthesis on lateral surfaces and restored cell size homeostasis. Mechanistic explanations require enhanced understanding of why deletion of mreB causes heterogeneity in cell wall synthesis. We conclude by presenting two testable hypotheses, one of which posits that heterogeneity stems from non-functional cell wall synthesis machinery, while the second posits that the machinery is functional, albeit stalled. Overall, our data provide support for the second hypothesis and draw attention to the importance of balance between transpeptidase and glycosyltransferase functions of peptidoglycan building enzymes for cell shape determination.
-
- Cell Biology
Polynucleotide kinase phosphatase (PNKP) has enzymatic activities as 3′-phosphatase and 5′-kinase of DNA ends to promote DNA ligation and repair. Here, we show that cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) regulate the phosphorylation of threonine 118 (T118) in PNKP. This phosphorylation allows recruitment to the gapped DNA structure found in single-strand DNA (ssDNA) nicks and/or gaps between Okazaki fragments (OFs) during DNA replication. T118A (alanine)-substituted PNKP-expressing cells exhibited an accumulation of ssDNA gaps in S phase and accelerated replication fork progression. Furthermore, PNKP is involved in poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1)-dependent replication gap filling as part of a backup pathway in the absence of OFs ligation. Altogether, our data suggest that CDK-mediated PNKP phosphorylation at T118 is important for its recruitment to ssDNA gaps to proceed with OFs ligation and its backup repairs via the gap-filling pathway to maintain genome stability.
