Transcriptomic study of the response of the maize pathogen Cochliobolus heterostrophus to a plant phenolic, ferulic acid

A comparison of the transcriptomes of wild type Cochliolobolus heterostrophus and a deletion mutant in the redox-sensing transcription factor ChAP1 was made. The aim was to study the role of ChAP1 in the response of this pathogen of maize to exposure to a plant-derived phenolic Wild-type C4 (MAT1-2 Tox1+) and ChAP1 deletion mutant (delta-chap1) strains of C. heterostrophus (see Lev et al. 2005 Eukaryotic Cell https://ec.asm.org/content/4/2/443.long https://ec.asm.org/content/4/2/443.long ) were grown at 22ºC on complete xylose medium (CMX) in 16 h white light, 8 h dark for induction of conidiation for 7 days. Spores were transferred to liquid CMX and incubated with shaking (200 rpm) at 22ºC for 3 days. The cultures were then treated with 0.5, 1 or 2 mM ferulic acid diluted from a 120 mg/ml solution in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO); these samples and the corresponding DMSO controls were incubated for 30 min at 22ºC with shaking (200 rpm), harvested, ground to a fine powder in liquid N2 and total RNA extracted using TriReagent following the manufacturers' protocol. After quality control, sequencing libraries were prepared with the Illumina TruSeq RNA library preparation kit v2 and sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. The experiment includes 4 independent biological replicates for the WT and 3 independent biological replicates for delta-chap1. Concentration series for ferulic acid (FA).