Project description:The soilborne fungus, Verticillium dahliae, causes Verticillium wilt disease in plants. Verticillium wilt is difficult to control since V. dahliae is capable of persisting in the soil for 10 to15 years as melanized microsclerotia, rendering crop rotation strategies for disease control ineffective. Microsclerotia of V. dahliae overwinter and germinate to produce infectious hyphae that give rise to primary infections. Consequentially, microsclerotia formation, maintenance, and germination are critically important processes in the disease cycle of V. dahliae.
Project description:The western corn rootworm (WCR, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte) is an important pest of corn (Zea mays) in the US. Annual crop rotation between corn and soybean (Glycine max) disrupts the corn-dependent WCR lifecycle and was widely adopted to manage WCR. However, this strategy selected for a rotation-resistant (RR) variant with reduced ovipositional fidelity to cornfields. Previous studies indicated that RR-WCR adults exhibit greater tolerance of soybean tissue diet, different gut physiology, and host-microbe interactions compared to wild-types (WT). To identify genetic mechanisms underlying these phenotypic changes, a de novo assembly of the WCR adult gut transcriptome was constructed and used for RNA-sequencing analyses on RNA libraries from different WCR phenotypes (RR and WT) fed with corn or soybean diets. Differential gene expression analyses and network-based methods were used to identify gene modules transcriptionally correlated with the RR phenotype. Gene ontology enrichment analyses on these modules were then conducted to understand their potential functions and biological importance. Differential gene expression analyses on RNA libraries from adult guts of different WCR phenotypes (rotation-resistant and wild-type) fed with corn or soybean diets
Project description:Bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum is a lethal, soil-borne disease of tomato. Control of the disease with chemicals and crop rotation is insufficient, because the pathogen is particularly well adapted for surviving in the soil and rhizosphere. Therefore, cultivar resistance is the most effective means for controlling bacterial wilt, but the molecular mechanisms of resistance responses remain unclear. We used microarrays to obtain the characteristics of the gene expression changes that are induced by R. solanacearum infection in resistant cultivar LS-89 and susceptible cultivar Ponderosa.