ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1590359
Involvement of the E2-like enzyme Atg3 in fungal development and virulence of Botryosphaeria dothidea
Provisionally accepted
- Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China
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Autophagy is a fundamental cellular degradation and recycling system that is crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis, responding to stress, and ensuring the proper functioning of cells. To date, the biological functions of autophagy in the plant-pathogenic fungus Botryosphaeria dothidea remains largely unknown. In this study, we identified and characterized the E2-like enzyme Atg3 in B. dothidea. The autophagic process was blocked in the BdATG3 deletion mutant ΔBdAtg3, and the ΔBdAtg3 mutant showed serious defects in mycelial growth, conidiation, perithecium formation and virulence. In addition, the ΔBdAtg3 mutant exhibited an increased number of nuclei in mycelial compartment. All of the phenotypic changes of the ΔBdAtg3 mutant were restored by gene complementation. These results indicate that the E2-like enzyme Atg3 plays an important role in various developmental processes and pathogenesis of B. dothidea, which provides a potential target for developing novel fungicides.
Keywords: Botryosphaeria dothidea, Autophagy, ATG3, development, Virulence
Received: 09 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ren, Han, Ma, Yu, Jiang, Yang, Liu, Wang, Li and LIAN. 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: Weichao Ren, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China
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