Host–Pathogen Interactions between Xanthomonas fragariae and Its Host Fragaria × ananassa Investigated with a Dual RNA-Seq Analysis

Abstract

Strawberry is economically important and widely grown, but susceptible to a large variety of phytopathogenic organisms. Among them, Xanthomonas fragariae is a quarantine bacterial pathogen threatening strawberry productions by causing angular leaf spots. Using whole transcriptome sequencing, the gene expression of both plant and bacteria in planta was analyzed at two time points, 12 and 29 days post inoculation, in order to compare the pathogen and host response between the stages of early visible and of well-developed symptoms. Among 28,588 known genes in strawberry and 4046 known genes in X. fragariae expressed at both time points, a total of 361 plant and 144 bacterial genes were significantly differentially expressed, respectively. The identified higher expressed genes in the plants were pathogen-associated molecular pattern receptors and pathogenesis-related thaumatin encoding genes, whereas the more expressed early genes were related to chloroplast metabolism as well as photosynthesis related coding genes. Most X. fragariae genes involved in host interaction, recognition, and pathogenesis were lower expressed at late-phase infection. This study gives a first insight into the interaction of X. fragariae with its host. The strawberry plant changed gene expression in order to consistently adapt its metabolism with the progression of infection.