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  3. A soybean cyst nematode suppresses microbial plant symbionts using a lipochitooligosaccharide-hydrolysing enzyme

A soybean cyst nematode suppresses microbial plant symbionts using a lipochitooligosaccharide-hydrolysing enzyme

  • Nat Microbiol. 2024 Jun 17. doi: 10.1038/s41564-024-01727-5.
Wei Chen # 1 2,  Di Wang # 1,  Shaoyong Ke 3,  Yangrong Cao 4,  Wensheng Xiang 1,  Xiaoli Guo 5,  Qing Yang 6 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China.
  • 2 Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
  • 3 Key Laboratory of Microbial Pesticides, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, National Biopesticide Engineering Research Centre, Hubei Biopesticide Engineering Research Centre, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, China.
  • 4 National Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
  • 5 National Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China. guoxi@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
  • 6 State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China. qingyang@caas.cn.
  • 7 Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China. qingyang@caas.cn.
  • # Contributed equally.
PMID: 38886584 DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01727-5
Abstract

Cyst nematodes are the most damaging species of plant-parasitic nematodes. They antagonize the colonization of beneficial microbial symbionts that are important for nutrient acquisition of Plants. The molecular mechanism of the antagonism, however, remains elusive. Here, through biochemical combined with structural analysis, we reveal that Heterodera glycines, the most notorious soybean cyst nematode, suppresses symbiosis by secreting an Enzyme named HgCht2 to hydrolyse the key symbiotic signalling molecules, lipochitooligosaccharides (LCOs). We solved the three-dimensional structures of apo HgCht2, as well as its chitooligosaccharide-bound and LCO-bound forms. These structures elucidated the substrate binding and hydrolysing mechanism of the Enzyme. We designed an HgCht2 inhibitor, 1516b, which successfully suppresses the antagonism of cyst nematodes towards nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and phosphorus-absorbing arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses. As HgCht2 is phylogenetically conserved across all cyst nematodes, our study revealed a molecular mechanism by which parasitic cyst nematodes antagonize the establishment of microbial symbiosis and provided a small-molecule solution.

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