Transcriptome analysis of calcineurin-mediated genes in Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici 4287

To further understand the abnormal phenotype of the calcineurin mutant strains and identify calcineurin-mediated genes in F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, we performed RNA sequencing to compare the transcriptome profiles of the wild-type (WT), ?cna1(HFW1) and ?cnb1 (HFW3) mutants. By pairwise analysis, a total of 2139 genes were differentially expressed between WT and ?cna1 mutant based on the selection criteria of four-fold change in expression (Log2 fold change > 2 or < -2, P < 0.05). Among these, 1079 genes were upregulated and 1060 genes were downregulated. Moreover, from the comparison of WT against ?cnb1 mutant, 1412 gene were being regulated, and 840 genes were upregulated while 572 genes were downregulated. To elucidate genes that were regulated by calcineurin in F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, the gene sets obtained from the pairwise analyses were compared, giving an overlap of 737 genes. Among these, 414 genes were found to be downregulated and 323 were upregulated, indicating that these genes possibly involved in the calcineurin pathway. GO functional analysis showed these transcripts were mainly involved in the oxidation-reduction process, single-organism metabolic process, transporter activity, cofactor binding, and other metabolic and biological processes. Overall design: Total mRNA extracted from F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici wild-type strain, ?cna1(HFW1) and ?cnb1 (HFW3) mutants were analyzed using RNA sequencing.