Nematodes are the largest number of animals in the world, many of which are parasitic nematodes, which will parasitize various animals and plants, cause huge losses of economic crops and spread diseases widely in developing countries.
Pleurotus ostreatus quickly paralyzes nematodes to obtain nutrition.
Xue, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology, China Academy of Sciences, recently led a research team to publish two papers on the trapping mechanism of nematodes by carnivorous fungi in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which is expected to be developed into new biological control methods and applied to agriculture in the future, or to develop new drugs for parasitic nematodes that infect people and animals.
Pleurotus ostreatus, Pleurotus eryngii and other fungi are quite common edible fungi, also known as carnivorous fungi. Scientists have found that in harsh environment, the mycelium of these mushrooms will paralyze and kill nematodes to obtain nutrients. Xue's team used the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans to study the molecular mechanism of paralytic nematodes in edible fungi.
Nematode meets Pleurotus ostreatus mycelium, which will cause muscle cell necrosis.
The research team found that when the nematodes hit the hyphae of Pleurotus ostreatus, the concentration of calcium ions in the muscles of the nematodes would be abnormally high, causing the muscles to contract excessively and become paralyzed. Then, the research team screened the randomly mutated nematodes, found out the mutant strains with fungal resistance, and found that mycotoxins need to enter the nematodes through the cilia of their sensory nerves to paralyze them. When nematodes lose their ciliary structure on sensory nerves due to mutation, they are resistant to Pleurotus ostreatus toxin, but as long as the ciliary structure of a sensory neuron is restored, fungi can paralyze the mutant nematodes again.
In addition, the research team also found that this mycotoxin can cause rapid necrosis of nerve and muscle cells. The mechanism of rapid cell death of nematodes is completely different from the existing parasitic drugs such as ivermectin, aldicarb and levamisole. Current antiparasitic drugs affect the neural activity of parasites. Mushroom toxin can directly cause cell death. Therefore, it is expected to develop new agricultural biological control methods or new drugs to fight parasitic nematodes that infect people and animals in the future.
Establishing a new strain model is beneficial to biological control in the future
The research team sequenced and decoded the genome of a nematode-trapping bacterium with outstanding sporulation, growth and trapping ability, in order to further study the molecular mechanism of nematode-trapping bacteria, and further found that nematode-trapping bacteria need information transmission of G protein to produce predatory structure, which proved that G protein plays an important role in the predatory behavior of nematode-trapping bacteria.
This study not only established a new model strain, but also showed a number of favorable molecular biology tools, which will help to understand the trapping mechanism of nematode trapping bacteria in the future, so as to develop effective biological control methods to control various parasitic nematodes that harm agriculture.
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