Project description:Analysis of the genome-wide DNA methylation pattern of Botrytis cinerea. Results provide new and important information that DNA methylation is critical for pathogenicity and development of Botrytis cinerea by regulating gene expression.
Project description:Tomato fruit ripening is associated with a dramatic increase in susceptibility to the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea, the causal agent of gray mold. Mature green fruit, prior to ripening, are largely resistant to B. cinerea, whereas red fruit, at the end of ripening, are susceptible to B. cinerea infection. We used microarrays to detail the gene expression changes that are induced by B. cinerea when tomato fruit at unripe and ripe stages are infected. Keywords: plant responses to pathogens
Project description:Analysis of the genome-wide DNA methylation pattern of Botrytis cinerea. Results provide new and important information that DNA methylation is critical for pathogenicity and development of Botrytis cinerea by regulating gene expression.
Project description:Botrytis cinerea, the causal agent of the gray mold, is one of the most important phytopathogenic fungi due to its ability to affect more than 1400 cultivable vegetal species. Signal transduction cascades mediate the dialogue between the environment, the plant and the fungus, which is essential in the infection process of B. cinerea. In this context, surface proteins (surfactome) have an important role as the first receptors in the signaling cascades, connecting the fungus response to the environment changes. Moreover, the relevant role of surfactome in infection process of pathogenic microorganism has been described, but nothing has been reported in B. cinerea. Therefore, in order to unravel new proteins and to complete the whole view of signal transduction cascades during infection of B. cinerea, surfactome of this fungus has been analyzed under two plant-based elicitors previously validated by the research group: glucose (GLU) as a constitutive stage and deproteinized tomato cell wall (TCW) as a virulence inductor. To identify the B. cinerea surfactome, the trypsin shaving of intact living cells approach has been optimized. Subsequently, all the peptide mixture obtained in surfactome isolation was analyzed using LC-MS/MS to identify their components. Our results shows that none of the used protocols disturbs the hyphae integrity, obtaining the best when PBS buffer plus 30% sucrose was used. In conclusion, in this work it has been carried out for the first time the optimization of a surface protein extraction protocol in Botrytis cinerea giving rise to a new subproteome; the surfactome. Integration of surfactome data inside the previous proteomics data collected by the research group has improved the complete view of signal transduction cascades during infection of B. cinerea, helping to unravel key points in the regulation of this process and therefore to further develop new and better discriminatory fungicides from a molecular approach.