ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbe and Virus Interactions with Plants
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1586720
Decoding Sugarcane Smut: The Role of Effector SsEF83 in Fungal Virulence and Plant Interaction
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangxi University, Nanning, China
- 2Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise, Guangx, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Sugarcane smut, caused by the fungus Sporisorium scitamineum, severely affects global sugarcane production. Effector proteins are crucial for fungal invasion and virulence in plants. Nevertheless, few studies have identified effector proteins in S. scitamineum and demonstrated their functions in smut progression. This study aimed to characterize SsEF83 (SPSC_06083), a cysteine-rich core effector of S. scitamineum. Our qRT-PCR results revealed that the expression of SsEF83 was significantly upregulated at 24 h, 72 h, and 168 h post-infection in sugarcane. Further confirmation of the secretion function of the SsEF83 signal peptide was provided by the yeast secretion system. SsEF83 was found to induce cell death in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. Subcellular localization analysis indicated that SsEF83 protein was localized in the cytoplasm. Notably, the deletion of SsEF83 did not alter fungal morphology, growth, and mating/filamentous, but it significantly attenuated the virulence of S. scitamineum. Furthermore, yeast two-hybrid screening was employed to identify sugarcane proteins interacting with SsEF83. Five sugarcane proteins were found to interact with SsEF83, and these interactions were confirmed by Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation (BiFC). Through AlphaFold 3 analysis of the interactions between SsEF83 and target proteins, significant binding interactions were detected between SsEF83 and target-2 or target-4. Moreover, our previous RNA-seq data suggested a potential association between the two target proteins and sugarcane's susceptibility or resistance to smut. Collectively, our findings demonstrated that the effector SsEF83 plays a crucial role in the virulence of S. scitamineum, providing new insights into the interaction between smut fungi and sugarcane.
Keywords: Sporisorium scitamineum, effector, Cell Death, Virulence, Sugarcane smut, SsEF83
Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 29 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Huang, Liu, Su, Qiu, Wu, Ming and LI. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ru LI, Guangxi University, Nanning, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.