Off the wall: The rhyme and reason of Neurospora crassa hyphal morphogenesis

Jorge Verdín; Eddy Sánchez-León; Adriana M Rico-Ramírez; Leonora Martínez-Núñez; Rosa A Fajardo-Somera; Meritxell Riquelme

doi:10.1016/j.tcsw.2019.100020

Off the wall: The rhyme and reason of Neurospora crassa hyphal morphogenesis

Cell Surf. 2019 Mar 8:5:100020. doi: 10.1016/j.tcsw.2019.100020. eCollection 2019 Dec.

Authors

Jorge Verdín¹, Eddy Sánchez-León², Adriana M Rico-Ramírez³, Leonora Martínez-Núñez⁴, Rosa A Fajardo-Somera⁵, Meritxell Riquelme³

Affiliations

¹ Industrial Biotechnology, CIATEJ-Jalisco State Scientific Research and Technology Assistance Center, Mexico National Council for Science and Technology, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico.
² Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
³ Department of Microbiology, Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, CICESE Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico.
⁴ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA.
⁵ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) South Campus, Institute for Applied Biosciences, Department of Microbiology, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Abstract

The fungal cell wall building processes are the ultimate determinants of hyphal shape. In Neurospora crassa the main cell wall components, β-1,3-glucan and chitin, are synthesized by enzymes conveyed by specialized vesicles to the hyphal tip. These vesicles follow different secretory routes, which are delicately coordinated by cargo-specific Rab GTPases until their accumulation at the Spitzenkörper. From there, the exocyst mediates the docking of secretory vesicles to the plasma membrane, where they ultimately get fused. Although significant progress has been done on the cellular mechanisms that carry cell wall synthesizing enzymes from the endoplasmic reticulum to hyphal tips, a lot of information is still missing. Here, the current knowledge on N. crassa cell wall composition and biosynthesis is presented with an emphasis on the underlying molecular and cellular secretory processes.

Keywords: BGT, β-1,3-glucan transferases; CHS, chitin synthase; CLSM, confocal laser scanning microscopy; CWI, cell wall integrity; CWP, cell wall proteins; Cell wall; ER, endoplasmic reticulum; FRAP, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching; GEF, guanine nucleotide exchange factor; GFP, green fluorescent protein; GH, glycosyl hydrolases; GPI, glycosylphosphatidylinositol; GSC, β-1,3-glucan synthase complex; MMD, myosin-like motor domain; MS, mass spectrometry; MT, microtubule; NEC, network of elongated cisternae; PM, plasma membrane; SPK, Spitzenkörper; Spitzenkörper; TIRFM, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy; TM, transmembrane; Tip growth; Vesicles.

Publication types

Review