The regulatory gene VosA affects conidiogenesis and is involved in virulence of the fungal cereal pathogen Cochliobolus sativus

• CsVosA was functionally characterized for the first time in this fungus by gene knockout and complementation.
• CsVosA negatively regulates spore production under both constant dark and constant light conditions.
• CsVosA affects conidiogenesis pattern by regulating the genes involved in this process.
• CsVosA affects virulence and its deletion leads to reduced expression of two genes for non-ribosomal peptide synthetases.
• The mutant phenotypes were fully restored by the wild type CsVosA gene.

VosA is one of the four components in the velvet complex shown to be involved in regulation of fungal development and secondary metabolism in filamentous fungi. However, the function of VosA has only been studied in a few plant pathogenic fungi. In this study, we identified the ortholog (CsVosA) of VosA in the cereal spot blotch pathogen Cochliobolus sativus and generated gene knockout mutants for functional characterization of the gene. Conidia of the CsVosA knockout mutants (ΔCsVosA) lacked trehalose, were significantly reduced in viability, had less pigmentation, and showed a dramatic reduction in tolerance to heat, oxidative, and ion stresses. However, ΔCsVosA produced more conidia than the wild type under both constant dark, and constant light conditions, suggesting that CsVosA is a negative-feedback regulator in conidiation. Interestingly, the ΔCsVosA mutants exhibited a hypermorphic conidiation phenotype with indeterminate growth of the conidial tip cells resulting in head-to-tail (acropetal) arrays of conidiogenesis, indicating that some genes involved in conidiation are also regulated by CsVosA. The ΔCsVosA mutants showed significant reduction in virulence on susceptible barley plants and the two genes for nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) involved in virulence during host infection were down-regulated in ΔCsVosA, suggesting that CsVosA may affect virulence of the fungus by regulating the expression of the genes for NRPSs, as well as other genes directly or indirectly involved in virulence.