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About the Authors:
Kai Cen
Contributed equally to this work with: Kai Cen, Bing Li
Roles Data curation, Investigation, Writing - original draft
Affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Insect Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
Bing Li
Contributed equally to this work with: Kai Cen, Bing Li
Roles Data curation, Investigation
Affiliations CAS Key Laboratory of Insect Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Yuzhen Lu
Roles Investigation, Methodology
Affiliations CAS Key Laboratory of Insect Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Siwei Zhang
Roles Resources
Affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Insect Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
Chengshu Wang
Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing - review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Insect Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1477-1466Abstract
The lysin motif (LysM) containing proteins can bind chitin and are ubiquitous in various organisms including fungi. In plant pathogenic fungi, a few LysM proteins have been characterized as effectors to suppress chitin-induced immunity in plant hosts and therefore contribute to fungal virulence. The effector mechanism is still questioned in fungus-animal interactions. In this study, we found that LysM proteins are also present in animal pathogenic fungi and have evolved divergently. The genome of the insect pathogen Beauveria bassiana encodes 12 LysM proteins, and the genes were differentially transcribed by the fungus when grown in different conditions. Deletion of six genes that were expressed by the fungus growing in insects revealed that two, Blys2 and Blys5, were required for full fungal virulence. Both proteins could bind chitin and Blys5 (containing two LysM domains) could additionally bind chitosan and cellulose. Truncation analysis of Blys2 (containing five LysM domains) indicated that the combination of LysM domains could determine protein-binding affinity and specificity for different carbohydrates. Relative to the wild-type strain, loss of Blys2 or Blys5 could impair fungal...