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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2022.12.30.522274

Botrytis cinerea small RNAs are associated with tomato AGO1 and silence tomato target genes supporting cross-kingdom RNAi between the fungal pathogen B. cinerea and its tomato host

He, B.·Cai, Q.·Weiberg, A.·Chen, A.-P.·Ouyang, S.·Borkovich, K.·Stajich, J.·Abreu-Goodger, C.·Jin, H.
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Abstract

Cross-kingdom or cross-species RNA interference (RNAi) is broadly present in many interacting systems between microbes/parasites and their plant and animal hosts. A recent study by Qin et al. (2022) performed correlation analysis using global sRNA- and mRNA-deep sequencing data of cultured B. cinerea and B. cinerea-infected tomato leaves and claimed that cross-kingdom RNAi may not occur in B. cinerea-tomato interaction (Qin et al., 2022). Here, we use experimental evidence and additional bioinformatics analysis of the datasets produced by Qin et al. (2022) to identify the key reasons why a discrepancy between the conclusion of Qin et al. 2022 and previously published findings occurred. We also provided additional experimental evidence to support the presence of cross-kingdom RNAi between tomato and B. cinerea. We believe it is important to clarify the basic concept and mechanism of cross-kingdom/cross-species sRNA trafficking and illustrate proper bioinformatics analyses in this regard for all the scientists and researchers in this field.

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He, B., Cai, Q., Weiberg, A., Chen, A.-P., Ouyang, S., Borkovich, K., Stajich, J., Abreu-Goodger, C., Jin, H.. 2023-01-02. Botrytis cinerea small RNAs are associated with tomato AGO1 and silence tomato target genes supporting cross-kingdom RNAi between the fungal pathogen B. cinerea and its tomato host. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.30.522274

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