刘常宏 教授
南京大学生命科学学院
Life and Functions of Extreme Fungi and Bacteria
Changhong Liu, Ph.D.
Changhong received his Bachelor in Plant Protection (1986), Master (1989) and Ph.D. (1998) in Plant Pathology from Northwest A & F University (Northwest Agricultural University), Shaanxi, China. From 1989 to 1995, he was a faculty in Shaanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences and worked on wheat disease control techniques and strategies. During this period, he developed a rapid detection technique for wheat streak mosaic viruses in Agricultural Research Station, Manitoba, Canada from 1992-1993. He did two years’ postdoctoral fellow in Nanjing University, and became a full-time faculty of the university afterwards. From 2002 to 2003, as a visiting scholar, he worked in NCI, NIH of USA and worked on transcriptional regulation in prokaryotes. Now he is a professor of microbiology in Nanjing University.
Contact Information
Tel: +86-25-89685469 (Office) Fax:+86-25-89685469
Email:chliu @nju.edu.cn
Research Interests
Biocontrol agent and its biocontrol mechanisms
Bacillus velezensis CC09 is an endophytic bacterium that we previously isolated from healthy leaves of Cinnamomum camphora, and shows great potential as a new biocontrol agent in control of many phytopathogenic diseases. Genome analysis indicates that B. velezensis CC09 has a relatively large genome size (4.17 Mb) with an average GC content of 46.1%, 4021 predicted genes, and 13 secondary metabolites encoding clusters, which endow the strain with strong and broad antimicrobial activities (Fig. 1). Currently, we demonstrated that strain CC09 can not only stably colonize inside plant tissues and express antifungal metabolites in planta, but also transport from roots to leaves through stems and act like a ‘vaccine’, stimulating plant resistance to pathogenic diseases, such as ‘take-all’ and spot blotch diseases (Fig. 2). At present, we mainly focus on the molecular mechanism of plant-bacterium-fungus interaction in planta, to understand the nature of endophytic biocontrol agents in control of plant diseases.
Life and function of fungi buried at ~2.5 km below the sea floor
Like bacteria and archaea, fungi are the most commonly studied eukaryotes in the marine environment and deep subseafloor ecosystems. Using sediment samples from the IODP Expedition 3337, we obtained a total of 69 cultural fungal isolates representing 61 Ascomycota and 8 Basidiomycota from 34 deep coal-associated sediment samples collected at depths ranging from 1289 to 2457 m below the seafloor (mbsf) off the Shimokita Peninsula, Japan (1118 m water depth). Penicillium and Aspergillus relatives were the most dominant genera within the Ascomycetes, followed by the members of genera Cladosporium, Hamigera, Chaetomium, Eutypella, Acremonium, Aureobasidium, Candida, Eurotium, Exophiala, Nigrospora, Bionectria and Pseudocercosporella. Genomic, biological and metabolic analyses showed these extreme fungal species, isolated from ~2.5 km sediments below sea floor, have many special characteristics from the strains obtained from other ecosystems. Some of the fungal species could degrade lignite to produce methane under anaerobic condition, which suggest these fungal species might play significant roles in biogeochemical cycle of C and/or N and/or S in deep biosphere. Currently, we mainly focus on: 1) discovery of novel pathway in fungi related to carbon geochemical cycle; 2) Better understanding of anaerobic fungi and their maintenance mode in deep biosphere.
Selected publications
1. Kang XX, Zhang WL, Cai XC, Zhu T, Xue YR, Liu CH. Bacillus velezensis CC09: A potential ‘vaccine’ for controlling wheat diseases. Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 2018; 31(6): 623-32. Cover story.
2. Li JL, Du MH, Lv GX, Zhou L, Li XQ, Bertoluzzi L, Liu CH, Zhu SN, Zhu J. Interfacial solar steam generation enables fast-responsive, energy-efficient and low-cost off-grid sterilization. Adv Mater. 2018; 1805159.
3. Liu CH , Huang X, Xie TN, Duan N, Xue YR, Zhao TX, Lever MA, Hinrichs K-U, Inagaki F. Exploration of cultivable fungal communities in deep coal-bearing sediments from ~1.3 to 2.5 km below the ocean floor. Environ Microbiol. 2017; 19(2): 803-18.
4. Cai XC, Xi H, Liang L, Liu JD, Liu CH, Xue YR, Yu XY. Rifampicin-resistance mutations in the rpoB gene in Bacillus velezensis CC09 have pleiotropic effects. Front Microbiol. 2017; 8:178.
5. Cai XC, Liu CH, Wang BT, Xue YR. Genomic and metabolic traits endow Bacillus velezensis CC09 with a potential biocontrol agent in control of wheat powdery mildew disease. Microbiol Res. 2017; 196:89-94.
6. Wang YT, Cai XC, Shi TQ, Zhang YL, Wang ZC, Liu CH, Zhu HL. Synthesis, molecular docking and biological evaluation of 1-phenylsulfonyl-2-(1-methylindol -3-yl)-benzimidazole derivatives as novel potential tubulin assembling inhibitors. Chem Biol Drug Des. 2017; 90:112-118.
7. Inagaki F, Hinrichs K.-U, Kubo Y, Bowles MW, Heuer VB, Hong WL, Hoshino T, Ijiri A, Imachi H, Ito M, Kaneko M, Lever MA, Lin YS, Methé BA, Morita S, Morono Y, Tanikawa W, Bihan M, Bowden SA, Elvert M, Glombitza C, Gross D, Harrington GJ, Hori T, Li K, Limmer D, Liu CH, Murayama M, Ohkouchi N, Ono S, Park YS, Phillips SC, Prieto-Mollar X, Purkey M, Riedinger N, Sanada Y, Sauvage J, Snyder G, Susilawat R, Takano Y, Tasumi E, Terada T, Tomaru H, Trembath-Reichert E, Wang DT, Yamada Y. Exploring deep microbial life in coal-bearing sediment down to ~2.5 km below the ocean floor. Science. 2015; 349(6246):420-4.
