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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Cereal Disease Lab » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #325285
Title: Effector profiles distinguish formae speciales of Fusarium oxysporum

Author
item VAN DAM, PETER - University Of Amsterdam
item FOKKENS, LIKE - University Of Amsterdam
item SCHMIDT, SARAH - University Of Amsterdam
item LINMANS, JASPER - University Of Amsterdam
item Kistler, Harold
item MA, LI-JUN - University Of Massachusetts
item REP, MARTIJN - University Of Amsterdam

Submitted to: Environmental Microbiology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/1/2016
Publication Date: 7/7/2016
Citation: Van Dam, P., Fokkens, L., Schmidt, S.M., Linmans, J., Kistler, H.C., Ma, L., Rep, M. 2016. Effector profiles distinguish formae speciales of Fusarium oxysporum. Environmental Microbiology. doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.13445.

Interpretive Summary: Fungi known as Fusarium oxysporum cause economically important disease on nearly every cultivated plant, including wilt diseases of tomato and other vegtables as well as Panama disease of banana. Due to their importance to agriculture, extensive genomic resources have been developed for these pathogens, including whole genome sequences of the Fusarium species mentioned in this publication. These Fusarium species differ in their host and tissue specificities, infection mechanisms, and the diseases they cause. Building upon the available genomic resources and employing comparative genomics, this publication describes genes and genome organizations required for the pathogenicity. This information will be helpful to plant improvement specialists who are working to develop plants resistant to these pathogens or for developing novel strategies for pathogen detection and disease control.

Technical Abstract: Formae speciales (ff. spp.) of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum are often polyphyletic in their origin, meaning that strains that infect a particular plant species are not necessarily more closely related to each other than to strains that cause disease in another host. Nevertheless, since strains of the same forma specialis infect the same host, the part of their genome that specifies host-specific pathogenicity is expected to be highly similar. Whole genome sequencing was performed on wild-type strains from five different ff. spp. (cucumerinum, niveum, melonis, radicis-cucumerinum and lycopersici). In each genome, genes for putative effectors were identified based on small size, secretion signal and vicinity to a "miniature impala" transposable element. The candidate effector genes of all genomes were collected and the presence/absence patterns in each individual genome were clustered. Members of the same forma specialis turned out to group together, with cucurbit-infecting strains forming a supercluster separate from other ff. spp. Moreover, strains from different clonal lineages within the same forma specialis harboured identical effector gene sequences, supporting earlier evidence for horizontal transfer of genetic material. These data offer new insight into the genetic basis of host specificity in the F. oxysporum species complex and show that (putative) effectors can be used to predict host specificity in F. oxysporum.