Transcriptome Analysis Reveals the Involvement of Mitophagy and Peroxisome in the Resistance to QoIs in Corynespora cassiicola

Quinone outside inhibitor fungicides (QoIs) are crucial fungicides for controlling plant diseases, but resistance, mainly caused by G143A, has been widely reported with the high and widespread use of QoIs. However, two phenotypes of Corynespora casiicola (RI and RII) with the same G143A showed significantly different resistance to QoIs in our previous study, which did not match the reported mechanisms. Therefore, transcriptome analysis of RI and RII strains after trifloxystrobin treatment was used to explore the new resistance mechanism in this study. The results show that 332 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were significantly up-regulated and 448 DEGs were significantly down-regulated. The results of GO and KEGG enrichment showed that DEGs were most enriched in ribosomes, while also having enrichment in peroxide, endocytosis, the lysosome, autophagy, and mitophagy. In particular, mitophagy and peroxisome have been reported in medicine as the main mechanisms of reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging, while the lysosome and endocytosis are an important organelle and physiological process, respectively, that assist mitophagy. The oxidative stress experiments showed that the oxidative stress resistance of the RII strains was significantly higher than that of the RI strains: specifically, it was more than 1.8-fold higher at a concentration of 0.12% H2O2. This indicates that there is indeed a significant difference in the scavenging capacity of ROS between the two phenotypic strains. Therefore, we suggest that QoIs' action caused a high production of ROS, and that scavenging mechanisms such as mitophagy and peroxisomes functioned in RII strains to prevent oxidative stress, whereas RI strains were less capable of resisting oxidative stress, resulting in different resistance to QoIs. In this study, it was first revealed that mitophagy and peroxisome mechanisms available for ROS scavenging are involved in the resistance of pathogens to fungicides.