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Background

The versatile poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) protein family participates in numerous cellular functions, including DNA repair, apoptosis, chromatin remodeling, and cell cycle regulation2. PARPs create long chains of ADP-riboses as they transfer ADP-ribose from NAD+ to their own amino acid residues or other acceptor molecules in a process called PARylation2. PARP1 has been thoroughly characterized in humans as the primary DNA repair PARP that senses DNA damage sites and recruits downstream DNA repair proteins, however the roles of PARP1 and the rest of the PARP family members are yet to be fully characterized in filamentous fungi4. Comparative genomic analysis revealed that the PARP family is uniquely expanded in the Fusarium oxysporum species complex, a filamentous fungus best known for agriculturally devastating crops such as bananas and tomatoes, causing enormous economic losses. PARP family genes are located on both the highly conserved core genome and the flexible, strain-specific accessory chromosomes of the F. oxysporum genome7 with copy number ranges from three to twenty across strains. In this study, four strains of F. oxysporum that possess different numbers of PARP proteins are used as a comparative system: Fo47, an endophyte; Fol4287, a tomato pathogen; MRL8996, a human pathogen; and Fo5176, an Arabidopsis pathogen. Infecting tomato plants, mice, and Arabidopsis with wild-type and Parp1-deficient F. oxysporum strains allows for the assessment of the impact of PARP1 on fungal disease cycle. Optimizing quantification of PARylated proteins under DNA damage …