Field Pathogenomics Reveals the Emergence of a Diverse Wheat Yellow Rust Population
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Hubbard et al. Genome Biology (2015) 16:23 DOI 10.1186/s13059-015-0590-8 RESEARCH Open Access Field pathogenomics reveals the emergence of a diverse wheat yellow rust population Amelia Hubbard1, Clare M Lewis2, Kentaro Yoshida3, Ricardo H Ramirez-Gonzalez4, Claude de Vallavieille-Pope5, Jane Thomas1, Sophien Kamoun3, Rosemary Bayles1, Cristobal Uauy1,2* and Diane GO Saunders2,3,4* Abstract Background: Emerging and re-emerging pathogens imperil public health and global food security. Responding to these threats requires improved surveillance and diagnostic systems. Despite their potential, genomic tools have not been readily applied to emerging or re-emerging plant pathogens such as the wheat yellow (stripe) rust pathogen Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (PST). This is due largely to the obligate parasitic nature of PST, as culturing PST isolates for DNA extraction remains slow and tedious. Results: To counteract the limitations associated with culturing PST, we developed and applied a field pathogenomics approach by transcriptome sequencing infected wheat leaves collected from the field in 2013. This enabled us to rapidly gain insights into this emerging pathogen population. We found that the PST population across the United Kingdom (UK) underwent a major shift in recent years. Population genetic structure analyses revealed four distinct lineages that correlated to the phenotypic groups determined through traditional pathology-based virulence assays. Furthermore, the genetic diversity between members of a single population cluster for all 2013 PST field samples was much higher than that displayed by historical UK isolates, revealing a more diverse population of PST. Conclusions: Our field pathogenomics approach uncovered a dramatic shift in the PST population in the UK, likely due to a recent introduction of a diverse set of exotic PST lineages. The methodology described herein accelerates genetic analysis of pathogen populations and circumvents the difficulties associated with obligate plant pathogens. In principle, this strategy can be widely applied to a variety of plant pathogens. Background mechanisms and diagnostic tools are needed to rapidly re- Emerging and re-emerging diseases of humans, animals spond to these emerging threats. With recent advances in and plants pose a significant hazard to public health and DNA and RNA sequencing, bacteriologists and virologists food security. These threats can arise from newly discov- are capitalizing on these technological advances by inte- ered pathogens, such as the Middle East respiratory syn- grating high-resolution genotypic data into pathogen drome (MERS) coronavirus in humans [1], or novel host surveillance activities [6]. However, the application of adaptation, as in zoonotic influenza [2]. Recent disease genomics to emerging filamentous plant pathogens has outbreaks in plants have been associated with expan- lagged. Filamentous plant pathogens tend to have large sions of pathogen geographic distribution and increased genomes and are often obligate parasites that cannot be virulence of known pathogens, such as in the European axenically cultured in the laboratory. The time-consuming outbreak of ash dieback [3] and wheat stem rust across and tedious protocols required to maintain these pathogens Africa and the Middle East [4]. Independent of the host on their hosts have impeded the translation of genomic organism, the scale and frequency of emerging diseases technologies into surveillance and diagnostics methods. have increased with the globalization and industrialization Traditional diagnostic tools for pathogens have been of food production systems [5]. Improved surveillance based on targeted cultures, PCR-based approaches and/ or phenotypic evaluation of disease response in specific * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] plant genotypes [7]. These methods detect only known 1National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Cambridge CB3 0LE, UK pathogenic agents, can introduce bias, and can fail to 2 John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK recognize novel variants or races due to their narrow Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2015 Hubbard et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Hubbard et al. Genome Biology (2015) 16:23 Page 2 of 15 scope [8]. However, next-generation sequencing tech- system [21]. The signatures of adaptation and gene ex- nologies can circumvent these limitations to provide a pression patterns of pathogen isolates with distinct rich source of data for the development of surveillance virulence profiles can provide a powerful means of and diagnostic tools. The high resolution of these ap- identifying specific avirulence/virulence proteins that proaches also enables exploration of the genetic deter- can be used to track pathotypes at a national and inter- minants underpinning pathogenicity. Whole-genome national level. Furthermore, publication of these draft sequencing has emerged as a preferred technology, espe- reference genomes also provides an opportunity to cially for viruses with relatively small genomes (approxi- characterize pathogen populations at a considerably mately 50 kb on average) [9], although this methodology higher resolution and on a much wider scale through is less tractable in pathogens with large genomes such as re-sequencing of PST isolates. filamentous plant pathogens, which have genomes that In this study, we developed a robust and rapid ‘field range from 19 to 280 Mb [10]. Alternatively, RNA sequen- pathogenomics’ strategy, using transcriptome sequencing cing (RNA-seq), which focuses solely on the expressed of PST-infected wheat leaves to gain insight into the fraction of the genome, reduces the sequence space of the population structure of an emerging pathogen. Our ana- sample and provides relevant transcriptome data for both lysis uncovered a dramatic shift in the PST population the pathogen and host in situ [11]. in the UK and supports the hypothesis that recent intro- Despite modern agricultural practices, diseases of the duction of a diverse set of exotic PST lineages may have major food crops cause up to 15% pre-harvest yield loss displaced the previous PST populations. Our field patho- [12]. Among these crops, wheat is a critical staple pro- genomics approach circumvents the difficulties associated viding 20% of the calories and over 25% of the protein with less-tractable filamentous plant pathogens and can consumed by humans [13]. One of the major fungal dis- be applied to other emerging populations of pathogens. eases of wheat is yellow (stripe) rust caused by the obligate fungus Puccinia striiformis Westend. f. sp. tritici Eriks Results (PST) [14]. This disease is widespread across the major Genotyping pathogens and their hosts using RNA-seq of wheat-producing areas of the world and can cause signifi- field-collected infected leaves cant reductions in both grain quality and yield in suscep- To characterize the genotypic diversity of PST at the tible cultivars [15]. In the past decade, new PST races field level, we collected 219 samples of wheat and triti- have emerged that are capable of adapting to warmer tem- cale infected with PST from 17 different counties across peratures, have expanded virulence profiles, and are more the UK in the spring and summer of 2013 (Figure 1a; aggressive than previously characterized races [16]. More Table S1 in Additional file 1). From these, we selected recently, a series of PST races have arisen in Europe and 35 PST-infected wheat samples from wheat varieties that overcome many of the major resistance genes in European spanned the resistance spectrum, and 4 PST-infected germplasm [17]. For instance, in 2011 a race group col- triticale samples (Table S1 in Additional file 1). Total lectively called ‘Warrior’ (based on the virulence of one of RNA was extracted from each sample and subjected to the initial variants of this group to the UK wheat variety RNA-seq analysis (Figure 1a). After filtering, an average Warrior) emerged as a serious threat to wheat production. of 37% (standard deviation 12.7%) reads aligned to the However, the origin of this new race and its relationship PST-130 reference genome [18], indicating that fungal with previously characterized races remain unclear. transcripts account for a high percentage of the transcripts An important first step towards the development of in PST-infected plant tissue (Table S2 in Additional file 1). more effective surveillance and diagnostic tools is the To address whether each sample comprised a single availability of a draft reference genome and annotation. PST genotype without considerable bias in allele- Cantu et al. [18] published a first draft sequence of PST specific expression, we calculated the distribution of isolate 130 (PST-130) with 22,185 annotated protein- read counts for biallelic single nucleotide polymor- coding sequences across the 64.8 Mb assembly. More phisms (SNPs), determined from alignment to the recently, Zheng et al. [19] published a 110 Mb draft PST-130 genome. As a dikaryon,