New insights into decoding the lifestyle of endophytic Fusarium lateritium Fl617 via comparing genomes

Fungal-plant interactions have persisted for 460 million years, and almost all terrestrial plants on Earth have endophytic fungi. However, the mechanism of symbiosis between endophytic fungi and host plants has been inconclusive. In this dissertation, we used a strain of endophytic Fusarium lateritium (Fl617), which was found in the previous stage to promote disease resistance in tomato, and selected the pathogenic Fusarium oxysporum Fo4287 and endophytic Fusarium oxysporum Fo47, which are in the same host and the closest relatives of Fl617, to carry out a comparative genomics analysis of the three systems and to provide a new perspective for the elucidation of the special lifestyle of the fungal endophytes. We found that endophytic F. lateritium has a smaller genome, fewer clusters and genes associated with pathogenicity, and fewer plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs). There were also relatively fewer secondary metabolisms and typical Fusarium spp. toxins, and a lack of the key Fusarium spp. pathogenicity factor, secreted in xylem (SIX), but the endophytic fungi may be more sophisticated in their regulation of the colonization process. It is hypothesized that the endophytic fungi may have maintained their symbiosis with plants due to the relatively homogeneous microenvironment in plants for a long period of time, considering only plant interactions and discarding the relevant pathogenicity factors, and that their endophytic evolutionary tendency may tend to be genome streamlining and to enhance the fineness of the regulation of plant interactions, thus maintaining their symbiotic status with plants.