Biology subjects

Guillou, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Guillou, S..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Population structure of the rice blast fungus Pyricularia oryzae in the context of elevated host heterogeneity

In a context where pathogen emergence threatens global food security, crop resistance to pathogens is crucial for preventing and controlling epidemics. Agrosystems with high intraspecific cultivated diversity are expected to better mitigate infectious diseases compared with homogeneous ones. However, the long-term impact of cultivated genotypic heterogeneity on pathogen populations is still under debate. The 1,300-year-old traditional agrosystem of the Yuanyang Terraces (YYT) in China exhibits an outstanding level of rice diversity. The rice blast fungus Pyricularia oryzae has been recorded in the area, making this area ideal for studying the impact of long term heterogeneous cultivation on plant-pathogen coevolution. In this study, we analysed 94 P. oryzae genomes from the YYT and compared them to 198 genomes representative of the worldwide diversity. We report elevated levels of genomic diversity of P. oryzae in the YYT. Whereas the worldwide diversity of this species is organized in four lineages, we detected seven lineages within the YYT, four of which are restricted to this area. The sampling dates of the YYT isolates (2009 to 2017) provided sufficient temporal signal to date nodes of the phylogenetic tree of isolates. Endemic lineages appeared to have arisen several centuries ago but later than the origin of the YYT themselves. We also detected recent introductions of worldwide lineages. Linkage disequilibrium analyses and in vitro cross experiments suggest that P. oryzae reproduces asexually in the YYT. These results suggest that long-term intraspecific crop diversity in the YYT has promoted the emergence and maintenance of a highly diverse, locally adapted pathogen population.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2023

Deep population structure linked to host vernalization requirement in the barley net blotch fungal pathogen

Invasive fungal pathogens pose a substantial threat to widely cultivated crop species, owing to their capacity to adapt to new hosts and new environmental conditions. Gaining insights into the demographic history of these pathogens and unraveling the mechanisms driving coevolutionary processes are crucial for the development of durably effective disease management programs. Pyrenophora teres is a significant fungal pathogen of barley, consisting of two lineages, Ptt and Ptm, with global distributions and demographic histories reflecting barley domestication and spread. However, the factors influencing the population structure of P. teres remain poorly understood, despite the varietal and environmental heterogeneity of barley agrosystems. Here, we report on the population genomic structure of P. teres in France and globally. We used genotyping-by-sequencing to show that Ptt and Ptm can coexist in the same area in France, with Ptt predominating. Furthermore, we showed that differences in the vernalization requirement of barley varieties were associated with population differentiation in France and at a global scale, with one population cluster found on spring barley and another population cluster found on winter barley. Our results demonstrate how cultivation conditions, possibly associated with genetic differences between host populations, can be associated with the maintenance of divergent invasive pathogen populations coexisting over large geographic areas. This study not only advances our understanding of the coevolutionary dynamics of the Pt-barley pathosystem but also prompts further research on the relative contributions of adaptation to the host versus adaptation to abiotic conditions in shaping Ptt populations. Impact statementMany invasive fungal pathogens have successfully followed major crop species throughout their intercontinental range, but continue to represent dynamic biotic threats. During their geographic expansion, invasive fungal populations were subjected to heterogeneous environmental conditions, or different populations of hosts, which could result in adaptation processes. Understanding this history of colonization can allow us to better prevent the emergence of infectious diseases of crops, and to better control them. One such fungus, Pyrenophora teres, negatively impacts barley production globally by causing net blotch disease. In this study, we characterized the genetic makeup of P. teres in France and how it compares with what can be sampled in other regions of the world. We found that both the net and spot forms of Pyrenophora teres can be in the same area in France, but the spot form is more common. We also discovered that the net form populations associated with winter and spring barley are different, which was not known until now. This study opens up numerous experimental perspectives aimed at evaluating whether the two populations of net form are adapted to their hosts or to the conditions of cultivation of their hosts, with the goal of implementing measures that force the pathogen to maladaptation. Data summaryGBS data are available under BioProject PRJEB66440. Single nucleotide polymorphism and reference genome assembly are available under doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10021844. Reads used for genome assembly are available under the BioProject PRJEB66476. The authors confirm all supporting data, code, and protocols have been provided within the article or through supplementary data files.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2023

Holistic integration of omics data reveals the drivers that shape the ecology of microbial meat spoilage scenarios

The use of omics data for monitoring the microbial flow of fresh meat products along a production line and the development of spoilage prediction tools from these data is a promising but challenging task. In this context, we produced a large multivariate dataset (over 600 samples) obtained on the production lines of two similar types of fresh meat products (poultry and raw pork sausages).We describe a full analysis of this dataset in order to decipher how the spoilage microbial ecology of these two similar products may be shaped differently depending on production parameter characteristics. Our strategy involved a holistic approach to integrate unsupervised and supervised statistical methods on multivariate data (OTU-based microbial diversity; metabolomic data of volatile organic compounds; sensory measurements; growth parameters), and a specific selection of potential uncontrolled (initial microbiota composition) or controlled (packaging type; lactate concentration) drivers. Our results demonstrate that the initial microbiota, which is shown to be very different between poultry and pork sausages, has a major impact on the spoilage scenarios and on the effect that a downstream parameter such as packaging type has on the overall evolution of the microbial community. Depending on the process, we also show that specific actions on the pork meat (such as deboning and defatting) elicit specific food spoilers such as Dellaglioa algida, which becomes dominant during storage. Finally, ecological network reconstruction allowed us to map six different metabolic pathways involved in the production of volatile organic compounds involved in spoilage. We were able connect them to the different bacterial actors and to the influence of packaging type in an overall view. For instance, our results demonstrate a new role of Vibrionaceae in isopropanol production, and of Latilactobacillus fuchuensis and Lactococcus piscium in methanethiol/disylphide production. We also highlight a possible commensal behavior between Leuconostoc carnosum and Latilactobacillus curvatus around 2,3-butanediol metabolism. We conclude that our holistic approach combined with large-scale multi-omic data was a powerful strategy to prioritize the role of production parameters, already known in the literature, that shape the evolution and/or the implementation of different meat spoilage scenarios.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2022

Stepwise recombination suppression around the mating-type locus in the fungus Schizothecium tetrasporum (Ascomycota, Sordariales)

Recombination is often suppressed at sex-determining loci in plants and animals, and at self-incompatibility or mating-type loci in plants and fungi. In fungal ascomycetes, recombination suppression around the mating-type locus is associated with pseudo-homothallism, i.e., the production of self-fertile dikaryotic sexual spores carrying the two opposite mating types. This has been well studied in two species complexes from different families of Sordariales: Podospora anserina and Neurospora tetrasperma. However, it is unclear whether this intriguing convergent association holds in other species. We show here that Schizothecium tetrasporum, a fungus from a third family in the order Sordariales, also produces mostly self-fertile dikaryotic spores carrying the two opposite mating types. This was due to a high frequency of second meiotic division segregation at the mating-type locus, indicating the occurrence of a single and systematic crossing-over event between the mating-type locus and the centromere, as in P. anserina. The mating-type locus has the typical Sordariales organization, plus a MAT1-1-1 pseudogene in the MAT1-2 haplotype. High-quality genome assemblies of opposite mating types and segregation analyses revealed a suppression of recombination in a region of 1.3 Mb around the mating-type locus. We detected three evolutionary strata, displaying a stepwise extension of recombination suppression, but no rearrangement or transposable element accumulation in the non-recombining region. Our findings indicate a convergent evolution of self-fertile dikaryotic sexual spores across multiple ascomycete fungi. The particular pattern of meiotic segregation at the mating-type locus was associated with recombination suppression around this locus, that had extended stepwise. This association is consistent with a recently proposed mechanism of deleterious allele sheltering through recombination suppression around a permanently heterozygous locus. AUTHOR SUMMARYRecombination allows faster adaptation and the purging of deleterious mutation but is often paradoxically lacking in sex chromosomes. It has been recently recognized that recombination can also be suppressed on fungal mating-type chromosomes, but the evolutionary explanation and the proximal mechanism of this phenomenon remain unclear. By studying here the sexual biology of a poorly studied mold living in rabbit dung, we reveal a striking convergence in three distant fungal lineages of an independently evolved association between the production of self-fertile sexual spores (carrying two nuclei with opposite mating types), a particular segregation of the mating-type locus and the lack of recombination on mating-type chromosomes, having evolved stepwise. Such a convergent association suggests causal relationships and will contribute to unveil the evolutionary causes of recombination suppression. Graphical summary O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=174 SRC="FIGDIR/small/500756v2_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (40K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1cea706org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@378c41org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@d90297org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1391c74_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Positive effect of combining high pressure and biopreservation treatments on lowering the bacterial growth during storage of diced cooked ham with reduced nitrite salt

We investigated the combined effects of biopreservation and high pressure treatment on bacterial communities of diced cooked ham prepared with diminished nitrite salt. First, bacterial communities of four commercial brands of dice cooked ham from local supermarkets, were characterised and stored frozen. Second, sterile diced cooked ham, prepared with reduced level of nitrite was inoculated with two different microbiota collected from the aforementioned commercial samples together with a nisin producing Lactococcus lactis protective strain able to recover from a 500 MPa high pressure treatment. Dices were then treated at 500 MPa for 5 minutes and bacterial dynamics was monitored during storage at 8{degrees}C. Depending on samples, ham microbiota were dominated by different Proteobacteria (Pseudomonas, Serratia, Psychrobacter, or Vibrio) or by Firmicutes (Latilactobacillus and Leuconostoc). Applied alone, none of the treatments stabilized durably the growth of hams microbiota. Nevertheless, the combination of biopreservation and high pressure treatment was efficient to reduce the growth of Proteobacteria spoilage species. However, this effect was dependent on the nature of the initial microbiota, showing that use of biopreservation and high pressure treatment as an alternative to nitrite reduction for ensuring cooked ham microbial safety merits attention but still requires improvement.

microbiology↗