L-amino acid oxidase-induced apoptosis in filamentous Botrytis cinerea.

As opposed to single-cell yeast and mammalian cell lines, apoptosis has not been greatly investigated in filamentous fungi because antibodies to the relevant fungal apoptosis-related proteins are not available commercially and because multicellular organisms cannot be studied using flow cytometry. Here we demonstrate how antibodies from a nonfungal source could be used to investigate this pathway. We show that apoptosis in the filamentous fungus Botrytis cinerea is triggered by the mitochondria-mediated caspase pathway, with release of the apoptotic factors cytochrome c, caspase 3, and caspase 9, on treatment with Trichoderma harzianum-derived L-amino acid oxidase.