The vascular wilt fungi Verticillium dahliae and V. albo-atrum infect over 200 plant species, causing billions of dollars in annual crop losses. The characteristic wilt symptoms are a result of colonization and proliferation of the pathogens in the xylem vessels, which undergo fluctuations in osmolarity. To gain insights into the mechanisms that confer the organisms' pathogenicity and enable them to proliferate in the unique ecological niche of the plant vascular system, we sequenced the genomes of V. dahliae and V. albo-atrum and compared them to each other, and to the genome of Fusarium oxysporum, another fungal wilt pathogen. Our analyses identified a set of proteins that are shared among all three wilt pathogens, and present in few other fungal species. One of these is a homolog of a bacterial glucosyltransferase that synthesizes virulence-related osmoregulated periplasmic glucans in bacteria. Pathogenicity tests of the corresponding V. dahliae glucosyltransferase gene deletion mutants indicate that the gene is required for full virulence in the Australian tobacco species Nicotiana benthamiana. Compared to other fungi, the two sequenced Verticillium genomes encode more pectin-degrading enzymes and other carbohydrate-active enzymes, suggesting an extraordinary capacity to degrade plant pectin barricades. The high level of synteny between the two Verticillium assemblies highlighted four flexible genomic islands in V. dahliae that are enriched for transposable elements, and contain duplicated genes and genes that are important in signaling/transcriptional regulation and iron/lipid metabolism. Coupled with an enhanced capacity to degrade plant materials, these genomic islands may contribute to the expanded genetic diversity and virulence of V. dahliae, the primary causal agent of Verticillium wilts. Significantly, our study reveals insights into the genetic mechanisms of niche adaptation of fungal wilt pathogens, advances our understanding of the evolution and development of their pathogenesis, and sheds light on potential avenues for the development of novel disease management strategies to combat destructive wilt diseases. Vascular wilts are chronic and very often severe plant diseases that cause billions of dollars in annual crop losses. The characteristic wilt symptom is a result of water blockage caused by the colonization and proliferation of pathogenic microbes in the plant xylem, a water-conducting system. We sequenced genomes of two Verticillium wilt pathogens and compared them to the genome of another wilt fungus, Fusarium oxysporum. The shared genomic features among these three wilt fungi suggest the acquisition of homologs of a bacterial glucosyltransferase, involved in adaptation to osmotic stress, through horizontal transfer. Analyses of glucosyltransferase gene deletion mutants in Verticillium dahliae revealed decreased virulence in the host plant Nicotiana benthamiana. Compared to other fungi, both Verticillium genomes encode more plant cell wall degrading enzymes, including those that are able to degrade cell walls of live plants. Between the two closely related Verticillium genomes, we discovered flexible genomic islands in the primary causal agent of Verticillium wilts, Verticillium dahliae. Coupled with the impressive arsenal of plant cell wall-degrading enzymes, these flexible genomic islands may have contributed to expanding genetic diversity for this organism to invade more plant hosts. In summary, our study reveals insights into the evolution and niche adaptation of fungal wilt pathogens and sheds light on the development of novel disease management strategies for combating the destructive wilt diseases.

Fungal plant pathogens secrete effector molecules to establish disease on their hosts, and plants in turn use immune receptors to try to intercept these effectors. The tomato immune receptor Ve1 governs resistance to race 1 strains of the soil-borne vascular wilt fungi Verticillium dahliae and Verticillium albo-atrum , but the corresponding Verticillium effector remained unknown thus far. By high-throughput population genome sequencing, a single 50-Kb sequence stretch was identified that only occurs in race 1 strains, and subsequent transcriptome sequencing of Verticillium -infected Nicotiana benthamiana plants revealed only a single highly expressed ORF in this region, designated Ave1 (for A virulence on Ve1 tomato ). Functional analyses confirmed that Ave1 activates Ve1-mediated resistance and demonstrated that Ave1 markedly contributes to fungal virulence, not only on tomato but also on Arabidopsis . Interestingly, Ave1 is homologous to a widespread family of plant natriuretic peptides. Besides plants, homologous proteins were only found in the bacterial plant pathogen Xanthomonas axonopodis and the plant pathogenic fungi Colletotrichum higginsianum , Cercospora beticola , and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici . The distribution of Ave1 homologs, coincident with the presence of Ave1 within a flexible genomic region, strongly suggests that Verticillium acquired Ave1 from plants through horizontal gene transfer. Remarkably, by transient expression we show that also the Ave1 homologs from F. oxysporum and C. beticola can activate Ve1 -mediated resistance. In line with this observation, Ve1 was found to mediate resistance toward F. oxysporum in tomato, showing that this immune receptor is involved in resistance against multiple fungal pathogens.

In this study, we functionally analyzed the gene family encoding necrosis- and ethylene-inducing-like proteins (NLP) of the vascular wilt pathogen Verticillium dahliae. We show that the composition of the NLP gene family varies little among V. dahliae isolates. The cytotoxic activity of NLP family members of a tomato-pathogenic V. dahliae strain was determined, demonstrating that only two of the seven NLP induced plant cell death. The genes encoding these cytotoxic NLP were found to be induced in V. dahliae upon colonization of tomato. Interestingly, targeted deletion of either of the two genes in V. dahliae significantly compromised virulence on tomato as well as on Arabidopsis plants, whereas deletion of only one of the two genes affected virulence on Nicotiana benthamiana. This could be attributed to differential induction of the two NLP genes in V. dahliae upon N. benthamiana colonization, revealing that the in planta induction of NLP genes varies between plant hosts. Intriguingly, one of the NLP genes appears to also affect vegetative growth and conidiospore production, because the corresponding deletion strain produced significantly fewer conidiospores and developed extensive aerial mycelium. In conclusion, we demonstrate that the expanded V. dahliae NLP family shows functional diversification, revealing not only differential cytotoxicity between family members but also that the cytotoxic NLP play a role in vegetative growth and asexual reproduction in addition to their contribution to virulence.

The ascomycete fungus Verticillium dahliae causes vascular wilt diseases in hundreds of dicotyledonous plant species. However, thus far, only few V. dahliae effectors have been identified, and regulators of pathogenicity remain unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of the V. dahliae homolog of Sge1, a transcriptional regulator that was previously implicated in pathogenicity and effector gene expression in Fusarium oxysporum. We show that V. dahliae Sge1 (VdSge1) is required for radial growth and production of asexual conidiospores, because VdSge1 deletion strains display reduced radial growth and reduced conidia production. Furthermore, we show that VdSge1 deletion strains have lost pathogenicity on tomato. Remarkably, VdSge1 is not required for induction of Ave1, the recently identified V. dahliae effector that activates resistance mediated by the Ve1 immune receptor in tomato. Further assessment of the role of VdSge1 in the induction of the nine most highly in-planta-induced genes that encode putative effectors revealed differential activity. Although the expression of one putative effector gene in addition to Ave1 was not affected by VdSge1 deletion, VdSge1 appeared to be required for the expression of six putative effector genes, whereas two of the putative effectors genes were found to be negatively regulated by VdSge1. In conclusion, our data suggest that VdSge1 differentially regulates V. dahliae effector gene expression.