Abstract
The Rad4-Rad23-Rad33 complex plays an essential anti-ultraviolet (UV) role depending on nucleotide excision repair (NER) in budding yeast but has been rarely studied in filamentous fungi, which possess two Rad4 paralogs (Rad4A/B) and orthologous Rad23 and rely on the photorepair of UV-induced DNA lesions, a distinct mechanism behind the photoreactivation of UV-impaired cells. Previously, nucleocytoplasmic shuttling Rad23 proved to be highly efficient in the photoreactivation of conidia inactivated by UVB, a major component of solar UV, due to its interaction with Phr2 in Beauveria bassiana, a wide-spectrum insect mycopathogen lacking Rad33. Here, either Rad4A or Rad4B was proven to localize exclusively in the nucleus and interact with Rad23, which was previously shown to interact with the white collar protein WC2 as a regulator of two photorepair-required photolyases (Phr1 and Phr2) in B. bassiana. The Δrad4A mutant lost ~80% of conidial UVB resistance and ~50% of activity in the photoreactivation of UVB-inactivated conidia by 5 h light exposure. Intriguingly, the reactivation rates of UVB-impaired conidia were observable only in the presence of rad4A after dark incubation exceeding 24 h, implicating extant, but infeasible, NER activity for Rad4A in the field where night (dark) time is too short. Aside from its strong anti-UVB role, Rad4A played no other role in B. bassiana's lifecycle while Rad4B proved to be functionally redundant. Our findings uncover that the anti-UVB role of Rad4A depends on the photoreactivation activity ascribed to its interaction with Rad23 linked to WC2 and Phr2 and expands a molecular basis underlying filamentous fungal adaptation to solar UV irradiation on the Earth's surface.