Poster

         Physiology

Botrytis cinerea energy investment in Secondary Metabolites

Presenting Author
Julia Cook
Description
Botrytis Cinerea is a fungal pathogen capable of infecting most plants, leading to negative impacts on agricultural production across the globe. Among B. Cinerea’s repertoire of virulence factors, specialized metabolites can induce cell-death across a variety of plant species. The investment of energetic resources into the production of specialized metabolites in host plants comes at a cost, however in a pathogen system these metabolites lead to the acquisition of more nutrient resources reducing the energetic cost over the lifetime of the organism. To assess energetic investment by B. Cinerea into specialized metabolism we created a genome-scale metabolic model to simulate the growth of B. Cinerea under various nutrient conditions. We find large differences in the growth rate of B. Cinerea on a non-limited media compared to a carbon limited media. We further describe the impacts of nutrient limitation on the simulated investment of B. Cinerea into specialized metabolites associated with pathogenicity. On a broader scale, our research furthers our understanding of the intersection of specialized metabolism and nutrient limitations in the context of host-pathogen interactions.