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. 2023 Jul 5:14:1207970.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1207970. eCollection 2023.

Amorphophallus muelleri activates ferulic acid and phenylpropane biosynthesis pathways to defend against Fusarium solani infection

Penghua Gao  1 , Ying Qi  1 , Lifang Li  1 , Shaowu Yang  1 , Jiani Liu  1 , Huanyu Wei  1 , Feiyan Huang  1 , Lei Yu  1
Affiliations

Amorphophallus muelleri activates ferulic acid and phenylpropane biosynthesis pathways to defend against Fusarium solani infection

Penghua Gao et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Amorphophallus sp. is an economically important crop for rural revitalization in southwest China. However, Fusarium solani often infects Amorphophallus sp. corms during storage, damaging the corm quality and affecting leaf elongation and flowering in the subsequent crop. In this study, the mechanism of resistance to F. solani was investigated in the leaf bud and flower bud corms of Amorphophallus muelleri through transcriptome and metabolome analyses. A total of 42.52 Gb clean reads and 1,525 metabolites were detected in a total of 12 samples including 3 samples each of disease-free leaf bud corms (LC), leaf bud corms inoculated with F. solani for three days (LD), disease-free flower bud corms (FC), and flower bud corms inoculated with F. solani for three days (FD). Transcriptome, metabolome, and conjoint analyses showed that 'MAPK signal transduction', 'plant-pathogen interaction', 'plant hormone signal transduction', and other secondary metabolite biosynthesis pathways, including 'phenylpropane biosynthesis', 'arachidonic acid metabolism', 'stilbene, diarylheptane and gingerolin biosynthesis', and 'isoquinoline alkaloids biosynthesis', among others, were involved in the defense response of A. muelleri to F. solani. Ultimately, the expression of six genes of interest (AmCDPK20, AmRBOH, AmWRKY33, Am4CL, Am POD and AmCYP73A1) was validated by real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and the results indicated that these genes were involved in the response of A. muelleri to F. solani. Ferulic acid inhibited the growth of F. solani, reducing the harm caused by F. solani to A. muelleri corms to a certain extent. Overall, this study lays a strong foundation for further investigation of the interaction between A. muelleri and F. solani, and provides a list of genes for the future breeding of F. solani-resistant A. muelleri cultivars.

Keywords: Fusarium solani; konjac; phenylpropane biosynthesis; plant-pathogen interaction; resistance genes.

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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.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Symptoms of Amorphophallus muelleri corms after three days of inoculation with F. solani.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Volcano plot of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) identified in the leaf bud and flower bud corms of A. muelleri infected with F. solani. (A, B) Leaf bud corms (A) and flower bud corms (B) of A. muelleri at 3 d after F. solani infection.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Gene Ontology bubble diagram of DEGs identified in the F. solani-infected leaf bud and flower bud corms of A. muelleri. (A, B) Leaf bud corms (A) and flower bud corms (B) of A. muelleri at 3 d after F. solani infection.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) bubble diagram of DEGs identified in the F. solani-infected leaf bud and flower bud corms of A. muelleri. (A, B) Leaf bud corms (A) and flower bud corms (B) of A. muelleri at 3 d after F. solani infection.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Heatmap of gene expression levels in the leaf bud corms and flower bud corms of A. muelleri infected with F. solani. The scale bar represents the expression level of each gene (FPKM) in different treatments, as indicated by yellow/blue rectangles. Genes in yellow were upregulated, and those in blue were downregulated. (A) Plant secondary metabolite biosynthesis pathway genes; (B) Ca2+ signaling pathway genes; (C) MAPK signaling pathway genes; (D) ROS metabolic pathway gene; (E) Ascorbic acid metabolism pathway genes; (F) PTI genes; (G) plant hormone signaling transduction pathway genes.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Volcano plot of DAMs identified in the leaf bud and flower bud corms of A. muelleri infected with F. solani. (A, B) Leaf bud corms (A) and flower bud corms (B) of A. muelleri at 3 d after F. solani infection.
Figure 7
Figure 7
KEGG bubble diagram of DAMs identified in F. solani-infected leaf bud and flower bud corms of A. muelleri. (A, B) Leaf bud corms (A) and flower bud corms (B) of A. muelleri at 3 d after F. solani infection.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Schematic of the phenylpropane biosynthesis pathway. (A, B) Correlation diagram (A), correlation network diagram of DEGs and DAMs (B), and histogram of the relative content of DAMs involved in the phenylpropane biosynthesis pathway (C). MSTRG.30509: 4-coumarate-CoA ligase (4CL2); scaffold1470318.1: peroxidase (PER51); C427344540.1: trans-cinnamate 4-monooxygenase (CYP73A12); scaffold1317237.1: trans-cinnamate 4-monooxygenase (CYP73A16); scaffold170000.1: trans-cinnamate 4-monooxygenase (CYP73A1); scaffold1269903.1: cinnamoyl-CoA reductase (CCR1); M182T295_POS: DL-tyrosine; M163T152_POS: coniferyl alcohol; M177T173_POS: trans-ferulic acid; M395T152_POS: eleutheroside b; M193T150_POS: sinapyl alcohol; M147T46_POS:P-coumaric acid. In (B), yellow line indicates negative regulation, and blue line indicates positive regulation. ** on the bars indicate significant differences at different infection times (Student’s t-test, P < 0.05).
Figure 9
Figure 9
Verification of the expression profiles of six unigenes by qRT-PCR. ** on the bars indicate significant differences at different infection times (Student’s t-test, P < 0.05).
Figure 10
Figure 10
Effects of different concentrations of ferulic acid (FA) on the growth of F. solani and A. muelleri. (A–D) Effects of FA on the colony diameter (A) and strain growth (B) of F. solani, and on the lesion diameter (C) and the resistance phenotype (D) of F. solani-inoculated A. muelleri corms.
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Grants and funding

This study was funded by Yunnan Province Youth Talent Support Program (grant no. 202101AU070047), Yunnan Provincial Science and Technology Department (grant nos. 2019FH001-008 and 2019FH001-051), Yunnan Fundamental Research Projects (grant no. 202101BA070001-163), Yunnan Education Department Research Project (grant no. 2022J0644), and Yunnan Education Department Research Project (grant no. 2023J0827).