bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.13.149757; this version posted June 15, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 HYD3, a conidial hydrophobin of the fungal entomopathogen Metarhizium 2 acridum induces the immunity of its specialist host locust 3 4 Zeyuan Jiang1, Petros Ligoxygakis2, Yuxian Xia1* 5 1Genetic Engineering Research Center, School of Life Sciences, Chongqing 6 University, Chongqing 400045, People’s Republic of China. 2Department of 7 Biochemistry, South Parks Rd, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QU United 8 Kingdom 9 *Corresponding author:
[email protected] 10 Abstract: Conidial hydrophobins in fungal pathogens of plants1,2, insects3,4, and 11 humans5,6 are required for fungal attachment and are associated with high virulence. 12 They are believed to contribute to the pathogenesis of infection by preventing immune 13 recognition5,6. Here, we refute this generalisation offering a more nuanced analysis. 14 We show that MacHYD3, a hydrophobin located on the conidial surface of the 15 specialist entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium acridum, activates specifically the 16 humoral and cellular immunity of its own host insect, Locusta migratoria 17 manilensis (Meyen) but not that of other non-host insects. When topically applied to 18 the cuticle, purified MacHYD3 improved the resistance of locusts to both specialist 19 and generalist fungal pathogens but had no effect on the fungal resistance of other 20 insects, including Spodoptera frugiperda and Galleria mellonella. Hydrophobins 21 extracted from the generalist fungal pathogens M.