Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Dec 5:15:1507931.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1507931. eCollection 2024.

Transcriptional responses of Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores after UV-B irradiation

Amanda Rocha da Costa Corval  1 , Lucas Amoroso Lopes de Carvalho  2   3 , Emily Mesquita  1 , Jéssica Fiorotti  4 , Thaís Almeida Corrêa  1 , Victória Silvestre Bório  1 , Adriani da Silva Carneiro  1 , Daniel Guariz Pinheiro  2 , Irene da Silva Coelho  5 , Huarrisson Azevedo Santos  6 , Everton Kort Kamp Fernandes  7 , Isabele da Costa Angelo  6 , Vânia R E P Bittencourt  8 , Patrícia Silva Golo  8
Affiliations

Transcriptional responses of Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores after UV-B irradiation

Amanda Rocha da Costa Corval et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Metarhizium is widely known for its role as an arthropod biocontrol agent and plant bioinoculant. By using mass-production industrial methods, it is possible to produce large amounts of fungal single-celled propagules (including blastospores) to be applied in the field. However, in the environment, the solar ultraviolet components (particularly UV-B) can harm the fungus, negatively impacting its pathogenicity toward the arthropod pest. The present study is the first to use comparative genome-wide transcriptome analyses to unveil changes in gene expression between Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores exposed or not to UV-B. Relative blastospores culturability was calculated 72 h after UV-B exposure and exhibited 100% culturability. In total, 6.57% (n = 728) out of 11,076 predicted genes in M. pingshaense were differentially expressed after UV-B exposure: 320 genes (44%; 320/728) were upregulated and 408 (56%; 408/720) were downregulated in the UV-B exposed blastospores. Results unveiled differentially expressed gene sets related to fungal virulence, production of secondary metabolites, and DNA repair associated with UV damage; genes related to virulence factors were downregulated, and genes associated with nucleotide excision repair were upregulated. These findings illustrate critical aspects of Metarhizium blastospores strategies to overcome UV-B damage and survive solar radiation exposures in insulated fields.

Keywords: RNA-seq; bioinputs; entomopathogenic fungi; insect control; tolerance to UV-B.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The authors declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Heatmap visualization of RNA-seq data from Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores exposed or not exposed to UV-B. For each sample in the RNA-seq dataset, the figure includes a heatmap demonstrating gene expression. Each row of the heatmap represents a gene, each column represents a sample, and each cell displays normalized gene expression values. Blue color represents low expressed genes, and red color represents highly expressed genes (FDR adjusted p < 0.05; Log2FC > 1 or < –1).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Principal component analysis of the transcriptome for comparison of Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores exposed or not to UV-B. (A) Score plot of PC1 and PC2. Control samples are black dots, and UV-B exposed samples are orange dots. (B) Loading plot exhibiting the ten genes with the highest loadings in PC1 (mainly related to the separation of treatments). (C) Descriptions and differences in expression of the ten genes. Positive numbers indicate upregulated genes, and negative numbers indicate down-regulated genes after UV-B exposure. The asterisk (*) indicates a description based on orthologs obtained from annotation with EggNOG.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Comparative transcriptome analysis of Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores exposed to UV-B. The volcano plot shows the differential gene expression in blastospores exposed to UV-B compared to that in unexposed blastospores (CTR). The data points above the significance threshold (FDR adjusted p < 0.05; Log2FC > 1 or < –1) are marked in blue (down-regulated in UV-B) and red (upregulated in UV-B), and others are marked in gray (not significant).
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Cluster of orthologous groups of proteins (COG) classification of Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores DEGs after exposure to UV-B (total fluence 4 kJ m-2).
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Enrichment analysis of gene ontology (GO) Terms of (A) up- and (B) down-regulated genes of Metarhizium pingshaense blastospores after UV-B exposure. The percentages of differentially expressed genes in the ten most expressive terms of each functional category.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Alkhaibari A. M., Carolino A. T., Bull J. C., Samuels R. I., Butt T. M. (2017). Differential pathogenicity of Metarhizium blastospores and conidia against larvae of three mosquito species. J. Med. Entomol. 54 696–704. 10.1093/jme/tjw223 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alkhaibari A. M., Carolino A. T., Yavasoglu S. I., Maffeis T., Mattoso T. C., Bull J. C., et al. (2016). Metarhizium brunneum blastospore pathogenesis in Aedes aegypti larvae: Attack on several fronts accelerates mortality. PLoS Pathog. 12:e1005715. 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005715 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Andrews S. (2010). FastQC: A quality control tool for high throughput sequence data. Cambridge: Babraham Bioinformatics, Babraham Institute.
    1. Arnesen J. A., Malagocka J., Gryganskyi A., Grigoriev I., Voigt K., Stajich J. A., et al. (2018). Early diverging insect-pathogenic fungi of the order entomophthorales possess diverse and unique subtilisin-like serine proteases. G3 Genes 8 3311–3319. 10.1534/g3.118.200656 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bernardo C. C., Barreto L. P., Silva C. R. S., Luz C., Arruda W., Fernandes E. K. K. (2018). Conidia and blastospores of Metarhizium spp. and Beauveria bassiana s.l.: Their development during the infection process and virulence against the tick Rhipicephalus microplus. Ticks Tick Borne Dis. 9 1334–1342. 10.1016/j.ttbdis.2018.06.001 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources