Genome-wide prediction and pathogenic analysis of non-classical secreted proteins of Lasiodiplodia theobromae
Lasiodiplodia theobromae is an important plant pathogenic fungus,infecting more than 500 species of woody plants and causing serious damages worldwide.The secreted proteins of pathogenic fungi play impor-tant roles in pathogen invasion,expansion,and colonization in plants.Although there are more reports on the in-volvement of classical secreted proteins in fungal pathogenicity,the roles of non-classical secreted proteins in the pathogenesis of plant pathogenic fungi have rarely been investigated.In this study,238 candidate non-classical secreted protein-coding genes were obtained by bioinformatic prediction based on the whole genome sequence of L.theobromae.Gene functional prediction and GO enrichment analysis showed that these genes are enriched in the carbon-sulfur lyase activity pathway.The annotation results based on PHI-base showed that 15 non-classical protein-coding genes might be related to the pathogenicity of L.theobromae.Predication of subcellular location using ApoplastP showed that 4 of them were located in plant apoplast and 11 were located in plant proplastids.Reverse transcription quantitative PCR(RT-qPCR)analysis results further verified that the transcriptional expression levels of the above candidate non-classical secreted protein-coding genes were significantly changed after treatment with grapevine branch tissues,indicating that these non-classical secreted proteins may play important roles in grapevine-L.theobromae interaction.The results lay a foundation for further understanding of the pathogenic mechanism of non-classical secreted proteins of L.theobromae.