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Read the article https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.227 

Abstract

Fungal pathogens represent a serious threat towards agriculture, health, and environment.
Control of fungal diseases on crops necessitates a global understanding of fungal
pathogenicity determinants and their expression during infection. Genomes of phytopathogenic
fungi are often compartmentalized: the core genome contains housekeeping
genes whereas the fast-evolving genome mainly contains transposable elements
and species-specific genes. In this study, we analysed nucleosome landscapes of four
phytopathogenic fungi with contrasted genome organizations to describe and compare
nucleosome repartition patterns in relation with genome structure and gene expression
level. We combined MNase-seq and RNA-seq analyses to concomitantly map
nucleosome-rich and transcriptionally active regions during fungal growth in axenic culture;
we developed the MNase-seq Tool Suite (MSTS) to analyse and visualise data obtained
from MNase-seq experiments in combination with other genomic data and notably
RNA-seq expression data. We observed different characteristics of nucleosome
profiles between species, as well as between genomic regions within the same species.
We further linked nucleosome repartition and gene expression. Our findings support
that nucleosome positioning and occupancies are subjected to evolution, in relation with
underlying genome sequence modifications. Understanding genomic organization and
its role in expression regulation is the next gear to understand complex cellular mechanisms
and their evolution.