Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Abscisic acid (ABA) is an important sesquiterpene compound that regulates the stress resistance of plants. Botrytis cinerea can synthesize ABA via the mevalonic acid pathway. To identify the functional genes that are involved in the biosynthesis of ABA, we performed insertion mutagenesis into B. cinerea TB-31. METHODS: We obtained the ABA-reduced mutant E154 by insertion mutagenesis, and we identified the insertion site was located upstream of the gene bcfrp1 by Thermal asymmetric interlaced PCR. We performed a detailed phenotypic characterization of the bcfrp1 knockout and complementation mutants in TB-31. Furthermore, transcriptome and proteome analyses were conducted to explore how bcfrp1 affects the level of the ABA biosynthesis. RESULTS: The bcfrp1 gene encodes an F-box protein. The phenotypic results confirmed the positive contribution of bcfrp1 to the biosynthesis of ABA and growth. Between TB-31 and ΔBcfrp1, we obtained 4,128 and 1,073 differentially expressed genes and proteins, respectively. The impaired ABA biosynthesis in the ΔBcfrp1 mutants was primarily affected by the different levels of expression of the ABA biosynthetic gene cluster and the genes involved in the mevalonic acid pathway. In addition, we further characterized the differentially expressed genes and proteins that participated in the growth, secondary metabolism, and signal transduction in B. cinerea based on the transcriptome and proteome data. DISCUSSION: This research based on the transcriptome and proteome analyses to display the changes after the deletion of bcfrp1 in B. cinerea TB-31, will help us to explore the molecular mechanism of ABA biosynthesis in B. cinerea.