Wood Degradation by Fomitiporia mediterranea M. Fischer: Exploring Fungal Adaptation Using Metabolomic Networking.

Fomitiporia mediterranea M. Fischer (Fmed) is a white-rot wood-decaying fungus associated with one of the most important and challenging diseases in vineyards: Esca. To relieve microbial degradation, woody plants, including Vitis vinifera, use structural and chemical weapons. Lignin is the most recalcitrant of the wood cell wall structural compounds and contributes to wood durability. Extractives are constitutive or de novo synthesized specialized metabolites that are not covalently bound to wood cell walls and are often associated with antimicrobial properties. Fmed is able to mineralize lignin and detoxify toxic wood extractives, thanks to enzymes such as laccases and peroxidases. Grapevine wood's chemical composition could be involved in Fmed's adaptation to its substrate. This study aimed at deciphering if Fmed uses specific mechanisms to degrade grapevine wood structure and extractives. Three different wood species, grapevine, beech, and oak. were exposed to fungal degradation by two Fmed strains. The well-studied white-rot fungus Trametes versicolor (Tver) was used as a comparison model. A simultaneous degradation pattern was shown for Fmed in the three degraded wood species. Wood mass loss after 7 months for the two fungal species was the highest with low-density oak wood. For the latter wood species, radical differences in initial wood density were observed. No differences between grapevine or beech wood degradation rates were observed after degradation by Fmed or by Tver. Contrary to the Tver secretome, one manganese peroxidase isoform (MnP2l, jgi protein ID 145801) was the most abundant in the Fmed secretome on grapevine wood only. Non-targeted metabolomic analysis was conducted on wood and mycelium samples, using metabolomic networking and public databases (GNPS, MS-DIAL) for metabolite annotations. Chemical differences between non-degraded and degraded woods, and between mycelia grown on different wood species, are discussed. This study highlights Fmed physiological, proteomic and metabolomic traits during wood degradation and thus contributes to a better understanding of its wood degradation mechanisms.

More than eleven years of temperature and displacements recorded on and in a limestone cliff: Dataset.

This data set gives more than 11 years of temperature and displacements recorded on and in a limestone cliff. An extensive presentation of the monitoring devices and interpretation of data is proposed in Gasc-Barbier et al. (2021) [1]. The hazard-monitored zone is a perched cave in a limestone cliff where a part of its roof had collapsed. On its roof, an unstable beam reminds. A horizontal interlayer thinning from East to West, hanging to the roof of the cave at the west and east-clamped in the rock mass, delimits this remaining beam. Opened fractures can be observed all around the beam. In order to assess the remaining hazard, four fissurometers (F1 to F4) and a thermal probe were installed on the roof of the cave and two borehole extensometers (D1 and D2) were drilled perpendicular to the face of the cliff, above the cave, to understand the global behaviour of the rock mass. Measurements have been made between sockets embedded in the rock mass by means of INVAR wire measurements. Four bases made of two sockets each have been installed inside the cavity and five were put on the face of the cliff outside and above the cavity. Measurements last between January 2011 and June 2021. A 1.5-year gap is observed in the measurements because they were temporally stopped when reinforcement works were preceded carried out in the cave in order to secure the village. Thus, datasets provide more than 11 years of temperature and displacements recorded on and in the cliff, providing insight on the relation between climate and the deformation inside the rock mass. This dataset is novel because this type of data is not readily available in the literature, on the one hand, because of its length (nearly 11 years) and, on the other hand, because it is not only surface evolution of temperature and aperture but because the evolution of temperature and deformation inside the rock mass was monitored. Researchers could use these data for a better understanding of the thermomechanical coupling in rock. They could test their own modelling, constitutive laws specifically on crack propagation or thermal fatigue.

Glutathione Transferases: Surrogate Targets for Discovering Biologically Active Compounds.

Glutathione transferases comprise a large class of multifunctional enzymes, some involved in detoxification pathways. Since these enzymes are able to interact with potentially toxic molecules, they could be used as targets to screen for compounds with biological activity. To test this hypothesis, glutathione transferases (GSTs) from the white-rot fungus Trametes versicolor have been used to screen for antifungal molecules from a library of tropical wood extracts. The interactions between a set of six GSTs from the omega class and 116 extracts from 21 tropical species were quantified using a high-throughput thermal shift assay. A correlation between these interactions and the antifungal properties of the tested extracts was demonstrated. This approach has been extended to the fractionation of an Andira coriacea extract and led to the detection of maackiain and lapachol in this wood. Altogether, the present results supported the hypothesis that such detoxification enzymes could be used to detect biologically active molecules.

Structure/Function Analysis of Protein-Protein Interactions Developed by the Yeast Pih1 Platform Protein and Its Partners in Box C/D snoRNP Assembly.

In eukaryotes, nucleotide post-transcriptional modifications in RNAs play an essential role in cell proliferation by contributing to pre-ribosomal RNA processing, ribosome assembly and activity. Box C/D small nucleolar ribonucleoparticles catalyze site-specific 2'-O-methylation of riboses, one of the most prevalent RNA modifications. They contain one guide RNA and four core proteins and their in vivo assembly requires numerous factors including (HUMAN/Yeast) BCD1/Bcd1p, NUFIP1/Rsa1p, ZNHIT3/Hit1p, the R2TP complex composed of protein PIH1D1/Pih1p and RPAP3/Tah1p that bridges the R2TP complex to the HSP90/Hsp82 chaperone and two AAA+ ATPases. We show that Tah1p can stabilize Pih1p in the absence of Hsp82 activity during the stationary phase of growth and consequently that the Tah1p:Pih1p interaction is sufficient for Pih1p stability. This prompted us to establish the solution structure of the Tah1p:Pih1p complex by NMR. The C-terminal tail S93-S111 of Tah1p snakes along Pih1p264-344 folded in a CS domain to form two intermolecular ß-sheets and one covering loop. However, a thorough inspection of the NMR and crystal structures revealed structural differences that may be of functional importance. In addition, our NMR and isothermal titration calorimetry data revealed the formation of direct contacts between Pih1p257-344 and the Hsp82MC domain in the presence of Tah1p. By co-expression in Escherichia coli, we demonstrate that Pih1p has two other direct partners, the Rsa1p assembly factor and the Nop58p core protein, and in vivo and in vitro experiments mapped the required binding domains. Our data suggest that these two interactions are mutually exclusive. The implication of this finding for box C/D small nucleolar ribonucleoparticle assembly is discussed.