A chitin deacetylase from the endophytic fungus Pestalotiopsis sp. efficiently inactivates the elicitor activity of chitin oligomers in rice cells

To successfully survive in plants, endophytes need strategies to avoid being detected by the plant immune system, as the cell walls of endophytes contain easily detectible chitin. It is possible that endophytes “hide” this chitin from the plant immune system by modifying it, or oligomers derived fro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2016-11, Vol.6 (1), p.38018-38018, Article 38018
Main Authors: Cord-Landwehr, Stefan, Melcher, Rebecca L. J., Kolkenbrock, Stephan, Moerschbacher, Bruno M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/326/421
631/449/2661/2666
631/45/72/1199
Acetylation
Amidohydrolases - immunology
Biological activity
Cell walls
Chitin
Chitin - immunology
Chitin deacetylase
Chitosan
E coli
Endophytes
Enzymes
Fungal Proteins - immunology
Fungi
Hexamers
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hypotheses
Immune system
multidisciplinary
Mushrooms
Oryza - immunology
Oryza - microbiology
Plant Cells - immunology
Plant Cells - microbiology
Plant Diseases - immunology
Plant Diseases - microbiology
Recombinant Proteins - immunology
Science
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Summary:To successfully survive in plants, endophytes need strategies to avoid being detected by the plant immune system, as the cell walls of endophytes contain easily detectible chitin. It is possible that endophytes “hide” this chitin from the plant immune system by modifying it, or oligomers derived from it, using chitin deacetylases (CDA). To explore this hypothesis, we identified and expressed a CDA from Pestalotiopsis sp. (PesCDA), an endophytic fungus, in E. coli and characterized this enzyme and its chitosan oligomer products. We found that when PesCDA modifies chitin oligomers, the products are partially deacetylated chitosan oligomers with a specific acetylation pattern: GlcNAc-GlcNAc-(GlcN) n -GlcNAc (n ≥ 1). Then, in a bioactivity assay where suspension-cultured rice cells were incubated with the PesCDA products (processed chitin hexamers), we found that, unlike the substrate hexamers, chitosan oligomer products no longer elicited the plant immune system. Thus, this endophytic enzyme can prevent the endophyte from being recognized by the plant immune system; this might represent a more general hypothesis for how certain fungi are able to live in or on their hosts.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep38018