Comparative secretome analysis of Striga and Cuscuta species identifies candidate virulence factors for two evolutionarily independent parasitic plant lineages
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Many parasitic plants of the genera Striga and Cuscuta inflict huge agricultural damage worldwide. To form and maintain a connection with a host plant, parasitic plants deploy virulence factors (VFs) that interact with host biology. They possess a secretome that represents the complement of proteins secreted from cells and like other plant parasites such as fungi, bacteria or nematodes, some secreted proteins represent VFs crucial to successful host colonisation. Understanding the genome-wide complement of putative secreted proteins from parasitic plants, and their expression during host invasion, will advance understanding of virulence mechanisms used by parasitic plants to suppress/evade host immune responses and to establish and maintain a parasite-host interaction. RESULTS: We conducted a comparative analysis of the secretomes of root (Striga spp.) and shoot (Cuscuta spp.) parasitic plants, to enable prediction of candidate VFs. Using orthogroup clustering and protein domain analyses we identified gene families/functional annotations common to both Striga and Cuscuta species that were not present in their closest non-parasitic relatives (e.g. strictosidine synthase like enzymes), or specific to either the Striga or Cuscuta secretomes. For example, Striga secretomes were strongly associated with 'PAR1' protein domains. These were rare in the Cuscuta secretomes but an abundance of 'GMC oxidoreductase' domains were found, that were not present in the Striga secretomes. We then conducted transcriptional profiling of genes encoding putatively secreted proteins for the most agriculturally damaging root parasitic weed of cereals, S. hermonthica. A significant portion of the Striga-specific secretome set was differentially expressed during parasitism, which we probed further to identify genes following a 'wave-like' expression pattern peaking in the early penetration stage of infection. We identified 39 genes encoding putative VFs with functions such as cell wall modification, immune suppression, protease, kinase, or peroxidase activities, that are excellent candidates for future functional studies. CONCLUSIONS: Our study represents a comprehensive secretome analysis among parasitic plants and revealed both similarities and differences in candidate VFs between Striga and Cuscuta species. This knowledge is crucial for the development of new management strategies and delaying the evolution of virulence in parasitic weeds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".