Knock down of chitosanase expression in phytopathogenic fungus Fusarium solani and its effect on pathogenicity

Chitosanases are lytic enzymes involved in the degradation of chitosan, a component of fungal cell walls. The phytopathogenic fungus Fusarium solani produces an extracellular chitosanase, CSN1, the role of which in the physiology and virulence of the fungus remains to be expounded. Here, we studied the expression of the CSN1 gene through gene silencing and examined its effect on fungal pathogenicity. A vector construct encoding a hairpin RNA (hpRNA) of CSN1 was constructed and introduced into the F. solani 0114 strain. The results revealed that majority of the transformants exhibited a significant reduction in chitosanase activity compared with the wild-type strain. Further, transformants with silenced CSN1 exhibited no change in mycelial growth and spore formation. However, pea pod and seedling bioassays indicated that transformants with silenced CSN1 were more virulent compared with the wild-type strain, and in sharp contrast to strains in which overexpression of the CSN1 gene resulted in virulence reduction. Although the mechanism remains unclear, our findings did suggest that F. solani chitosanase has a negative effect on fungal pathogenicity.