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Article|01 Mar 2020|OPEN
A temporal gene expression map of Chrysanthemum leaves infected with Alternaria alternata reveals different stages of defense mechanisms
Ye Liu1 , Jingjing Xin1 , Lina Liu1 , Aiping Song1 , Zhiyong Guan1 , Weimin Fang1 and Fadi Chen,1 ,
1State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Key Laboratory of Landscaping, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
*Corresponding author. E-mail: chenfd@njau.edu.cn

Horticulture Research 7,
Article number: 23 (2020)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41438-020-0245-0
Views: 1204

Received: 19 Jul 2019
Revised: 24 Dec 2019
Accepted: 04 Jan 2020
Published online: 01 Mar 2020

Abstract

Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) black spot disease (CBS) poses a major threat to Chrysanthemum cultivation owing to suitable climate conditions and current lack of resistant cultivars for greenhouse cultivation. In this study, we identified a number of genes that respond to Alternaria alternata infection in resistant and susceptible Chrysanthemum cultivars. Based on RNA sequencing technology and a weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA), we constructed a model to elucidate the response of Chrysanthemum leaves to A. alternata infection at different stages and compared the mapped response of the resistant cultivar ‘Jinba’ to that of the susceptible cultivar ‘Zaoyihong’. In the early stage of infection, when lesions had not yet formed, abscisic acid (ABA), salicylic acid (SA) and EDS1-mediated resistance played important roles in the Chrysanthemum defense system. With the formation of necrotic lesions, ethylene (ET) metabolism and the Ca2+ signal transduction pathway strongly responded to A. alternata infection. During the late stage, when necrotic lesions continued to expand, members of the multidrug and toxic compound extrusion (MATE) gene family were highly expressed, and their products may be involved in defense against A. alternata invasion by exporting toxins produced by the pathogen, which plays important roles in the pathogenicity of A. alternata. Furthermore, the function of hub genes was verified by qPCR and transgenic assays. The identification of hub genes at different stages, the comparison of hub genes between the two cultivars and the highly expressed genes in the resistant cultivar ‘Jinba’ provide a theoretical basis for breeding cultivars resistant to CBS.