Transcriptome profiling reveals the response process of tomato carrying Cf-19 and Cladosporium fulvum interaction

Background: During tomato cultivation, tomato leaf mould is a common disease caused by Cladosporium fulvum (C. fulvum). By encoding Cf proteins, which can recognize corresponding AVR proteins produced by C. fulvum, Cf genes provide resistance to C. fulvum, and the resistance response patterns mediated by different Cf genes are not identical. Plants carrying the Cf-19 gene show effective resistance to C. fulvum in the field and can be used as new resistant materials in breeding. In this study, to identify key regulatory genes related to resistance and to understand the resistance response process in tomato plants carrying Cf-19, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to analyse the differences between the response of resistant plants (CGN18423, carrying the Cf-19 gene) and susceptible plants (Moneymaker (MM), carrying the Cf-0 gene) at 0, 7 and 20 days after inoculation (dai). Results: A total of 418 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified specifically in the CGN18423 response process. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis revealed that GO terms including plasma membrane (GO_Component), histidine decarboxylase activity (GO_Function), and carboxylic acid metabolic process (GO_Process), as well as other 10 GO terms, were significantly enriched. The plant hormone signal transduction pathway, which was unique to CGN18423 in the 0-7 dai comparison, was identified. Moreover, ten key regulatory points were screened from the plant hormone signal transduction pathway and the plant pathogen interaction pathway. Hormone content measurements revealed that the salicylic acid (SA) contents increased and peaked at 7 dai, after which the contents deceased and reached minimum values in both CGN18423 and MM plants at 20 dai. The jasmonic acid (JA) content increased to a very high level at 7 dai but then decreased to nearly the initial level at 20 dai in CGN18423, while it continued to increase slightly during the whole process from 0 to 20 dai in MM. Conclusions: The initial responses are very different between the resistant and susceptible plants. The plant hormone signal transduction pathway is important for the formation of Cf-19-mediated immunity. In addition, both JA and SA play roles in regulating the Cf-19-dependent resistance response.