2‑Methoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone Induces Metabolic Shifts in Penicillium Digitatum Revealed by High-Dimensional Biological Data

Penicillium
digitatum is the primary pathogen causing the green
mold of citrus. The need
for the development of higher effective and lower toxic natural antifungal
agents is urgent, owing to the lack of antifungal agents that can
successfully combat P. digitatum. Herein,
the effects and mechanisms of 2-methoxy-1,4-naphthoquinone (MNQ) as
a potential inhibitor of P. digitatumwere studied. First, MNQ showed a significant anti-P. digitatum effect with a minimum inhibitory concentration
value of 5.0 μg/mL. Then, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome
profiling were performed on the MNQ-treated P. digitatum. A total of 910 genes, 297 proteins, and 174 metabolites changed
significantly. The omics analysis indicated that it could be seen
that MNQ mainly inhibits the growth of P. digitatum by affecting the synthesis of branched-chain amino acids and cell
walls. These findings will be a great contribution to the further
understanding of the possible molecular action of MNQ.