Pathogen genetic control of transcriptome variation in the Arabidopsis thaliana – Botrytis cinerea pathosystem

In plant-pathogen relations, disease symptoms arise from the interaction of the host and pathogen genomes. Host-pathogen functional gene interactions are well described while little is known about how the pathogen genetic variation modulates both organisms’ transcriptomes. To model and generate hypotheses on a generalist pathogen control of gene expression regulation, we used the Botrytis cinerea - Arabidopsis thaliana pathosystem and the genetic diversity of a collection of 96 B. cinerea isolates. We performed expression-based genome-wide association (eGWA) for each of 23,947 measurable transcripts in Arabidopsis (host), and 9,267 measurable transcripts in B. cinerea (pathogen). Unlike other eGWA studies, we detected a relative absence of locally acting expression quantitative trait loci (cis-eQTL) partly caused by structural variants and allelic heterogeneity hindering their identification. This study identified several distantly acting trans-eQTL linked to eQTL hotspots dispersed acr...

在植物-病原互作体系中，病害症状源于宿主与病原基因组的相互作用。宿主-病原功能基因互作已得到充分阐释，但目前对于病原遗传变异如何调控双方生物体的转录组，仍知之甚少。为针对广谱性病原对基因表达调控的作用建模并提出假说，本研究选用灰葡萄孢（Botrytis cinerea）-拟南芥（Arabidopsis thaliana）病害系统，以及由96株灰葡萄孢菌株组成的集合所携带的遗传多样性资源。我们分别对宿主拟南芥的23947个可检测转录本、病原灰葡萄孢的9267个可检测转录本开展了基于表达的全基因组关联分析（expression-based genome-wide association, eGWA）。与其他eGWA研究不同的是，本研究未检测到大量顺式作用表达数量性状位点（cis-eQTL），这一现象部分源于结构变异与等位基因异质性阻碍了此类位点的鉴定。本研究共鉴定出多个与eQTL热点区域相关的反式作用表达数量性状位点（trans-eQTL），这些热点区域分散分布于……