In planta Identification of Putative Pathogenicity Factors from the Chickpea Pathogen Ascochyta rabiei by De novo Transcriptome Sequencing Using RNA-Seq and Massive Analysis of cDNA Ends

The most important foliar diseases in legumes worldwide are ascochyta blights. Up to now, in the Ascochyta-legume pathosystem most studies focused on the identification of resistance genes in the host, while very little is known about the pathogenicity factors of the fungal pathogen. Moreover, available data were often obtained from fungi growing under artificial conditions. Therefore, in this study we aimed at the identification of the pathogenicity factors of Ascochyta rabiei, causing ascochyta blight in chickpea. To identify potential fungal pathogenicity factors, we employed RNA-seq and Massive Analysis of cDNA Ends (MACE) to produce comprehensive expression profiles of A. rabiei genes isolated either from the fungus growing in absence of its host or from fungi infecting chickpea leaves. We further provide a comprehensive de novo assembly of the A. rabiei transcriptome comprising 22,725 contigs with an average length of 1178 bp. Since pathogenicity factors are usually secreted, we predicted the A. rabiei secretome, yielding 550 putatively secreted proteins. MACE identified 596 transcripts that were up-regulated during infection. An analysis of these genes identified a collection of candidate pathogenicity factors and unraveled the pathogen's strategy for infecting its host.