Authors
Bo Pu, Haonan Yu, Zheyu Pan, Lisheng Duan, Tao Liu, Haiyuan Li, Jiali Liu, Renfu Zhang, Xiaoping Hu, Jun Qin
Published in
Plant, cell & environment. Oct 30, 2026. Epub Oct 30, 2026.
Abstract
Plant pathogenic fungi secrete a wide array of effector proteins to manipulate host immunity, including those containing CFEM (Common in Fungal Extracellular Membranes) domains. Here, we identified a CFEM domain-containing effector VdCR from Verticillium dahliae, the causal agent of cotton Verticillium wilt. The expression of VdCR was drastically upregulated during cotton infection. Targeted deletion of VdCR compromised fungal oxidative stress resistance and pathogenicity on cotton, establishing it as a key virulence factor. VdCR physically targets cotton non-classical arabinogalactan protein GhAGP31 via its CFEM domain. Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) of GhAGP31 significantly enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, callose and lignin deposition, and plant resistance to V. dahliae, confirming that GhAGP31 acts as a negative regulator of vascular immunity. In addition, we identified GhAGP31 as a negative regulator of cotton vascular development, revealing its dual roles in coordinating plant immunity and development. We further verified that VdCR stabilises GhAGP31 to promote its accumulation both in vitro and in planta. Collectively, this study demonstrates that GhAGP31 functions as a novel cotton susceptibility factor that suppresses both vascular immunity and development and can be stabilised by the V. dahliae CFEM effector VdCR to facilitate fungal infection.
PMID:
42958989
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Oct 2026.
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