Irradiation by blue light in the presence of a photoacid confers changes to colony morphology of the plant pathogen Colletotrichum gloeosporioides

•Irradiation of a photoacid in Agar hydrogel damages hyphae of C. gloeosporioides as•Irradiation time in which damage is observed depends on the fluence of the laser.•Irradiation time until noticed damage depends on the photoacid concentration.

We used the photoacid 8-hydroxy-1,3,6-pyrenetrisulfonate (HPTS) that converts blue photons to acidic protons in water, with an efficiency of close to 100%, and determined that this treatment conferred changes to colony morphology of the plant pathogen Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. The time elapsed until hyphal collapse is noticed depends on both the laser intensity in mW/cm2, and the concentration of HPTS in the Agar hydrogel. The time elapsed until hyphal collapse is noticed varies by only ± 8% at HPTS concentrations of 500 μM and at lower concentrations of HPTS the variance increases as the inverse of the concentration. We found that the effect on C. gloeosporioides was photoacid concentration and irradiation dose dependent. In the presence of 500 μM of HPTS within the agar hydrogel-based medium, hyphae collapsed after 37 ± 3.5 min of irradiation at 405 nm at an intensity of 25 mW/cm2. We propose two mechanisms for such photo-alteration of C. gloeosporioides. One is based on the pH drop in the extracellular environment by the photo-protolytic process that the photoacid molecule undergoes. The second mechanism is based on an intracellular mechanism in which there is an uptake of HPTS into the interior of the fungus. We suggest that both mechanisms for photo-alteration which we found in this study may occur in plants during fungal infection.

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