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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Cereal Disease Lab » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #183136
Title: SEQUENCING AND ANALYSIS OF THE FUSARIUM GRAMINEARUM GENOME

Author
item CUOMO, CHRISTINA
item MA, LI-JUN
item BUTLER, JONATHAN
item CALVO, SARAH
item DECAPRIO, DAVID
item ELKINS, TIMOTHY
item GALAGAN, JAMES
item XU, JIN-RONG
item TRAIL, FRANCES
item Kistler, Harold
item BIRREN, BRUCE

Submitted to: Fungal Genetics Newsletter
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/15/2005
Publication Date: 4/1/2005
Citation: Cuomo, C., Ma, L.-J., Butler, J., Calvo, S., DeCaprio, D., Elkins, T., Galagan, J., Xu, J.-R., Trail, F., Kistler, H.C., Birren, B. 2005. Sequencing and analysis of the Fusarium graminearum genome [abstract]. Fungal Genetics Newsletter. 52:81.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Fusarium graminearum is a major plant pathogen that causes head blight of wheat and barley. The Broad Institute and members of the Fusarium community have produced and analyzed a high-quality draft sequence of F. graminearum. The assembly contains 36 Mb of sequence at 10-fold depth. Nearly all (99.5%) of the sequence was anchored to the 4 chromosomes using genetic mapping. A total of 11,640 protein coding genes were predicted; 17% of proteins are unique to F. graminearum, showing no significant homology to any protein in the nonredundant (nr) protein database. Compared to other sequenced eukaryotes, F. graminearum contains very few high identity paralogous genes. Additionally, the genome is repeat poor, containing between 15- and 30-fold fewer repeats than other sequenced ascomycetes. One possible explanation for the lack of high identity sequences is that the process of repeat-induced point mutation (RIP) is active in F. graminearum. The longest repeat family, a group of Fot1-like inactive transposons, shows a mutation bias consistent with a low level of RIP. Further, a search of the protein set revealed a putative ortholog of the rid (rip-defective) gene of N. crassa. However, the genome contains very few remnants of repetitive elements as compared to N. crassa. This suggests that although there is some evidence for RIP activity in F. graminearum, RIP alone does not explain the absence of repeats in the genome.