Phase-specific transcriptional patterns of the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora sojae unravel genes essential for asexual development and pathogenic processes.

Oomycetes are filamentous microorganisms easily mistaken as fungi but vastly differ in physiology, biochemistry, and genetics. This commonly-held misconception lead to a reduced effectiveness by using conventional fungicides to control oomycetes, thus it demands the identification of novel functional genes as target for precisely design oomycetes-specific microbicide. The present study initially analyzed the available transcriptome data of the model oomycete pathogen, Phytophthora sojae, and constructed an expression matrix of 10,953 genes across the stages of asexual development and host infection. Hierarchical clustering, specificity, and diversity analyses revealed a more pronounced transcriptional plasticity during the stages of asexual development than that in host infection, which drew our attention by particularly focusing on transcripts in asexual development stage to eventually clustered them into 6 phase-specific expression modules. Three of which respectively possessing a serine/threonine phosphatase (PP2C) expressed during the mycelial and sporangium stages, a histidine kinase (HK) expressed during the zoospore and cyst stages, and a bZIP transcription factor (bZIP32) exclusive to the cyst germination stage were selected for down-stream functional validation. In this way, we demonstrated that PP2C, HK, and bZIP32 play significant roles in P. sojae asexual development and virulence. Thus, these findings provide a foundation for further gene functional annotation in oomycetes and crop disease management.