10th INTERNATIONAL VERTICILLIUM SYMPOSIUM 16-20 ...

ANALYSES OF MATING TYPE GENES IN VERTICILLIUMSPECIESDEZ BARBARA 8* , PATRIK INDERBITZIN 2, EMILY CLEWES 8 , CLAREGRANT 8 , STEVE KLOSTERMAN 1 , KRISHNA V. SUBBARAO 2 ,KATHERINE F. DOBINSON 3 , PAOLA VERONESE 4 , BART P. H. J.THOMMA 5 , MARIA D. GARCIA-PEDRAJAS 6 , AMY ANCHIETA 1 , ZEHUACHEN 7 , RONNIE DE JONGE 5 , PARTHA SANTHANAM 5 , KARUNAKARANMARUTHACHALAM 2 , ZAHI ATALLAH 2 , STEFAN AMYOTTE 3 , ZAHIPAZ 9 , DAVID I. HEIMAN 7 , SARAH YOUNG 7 , QIANDONG ZENG 7 ,REINHARD ENGELS 7 , MICHAEL KOEHRSEN 7 , JAMES GALAGAN 7 ,BRUCE BIRREN 7 , CHRISTINA CUOMO 7 , SEOGCHAN KANG 10 , SCOTT E.GOLD 9 AND LI-JUN MA 7*Dez.Barbara@warwick.ac.uk1 USDA-ARS, Salinas, CA, USA; 2 University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; 3 Agriculture andAgri-Food Canada, London, Ontario, Canada, 4 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA; 5Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands; 6 Estacion ExperimentalLa Mayora, CSIC, Malaga, Spain; 7 The Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA; 8 University ofWarwick, Wellesbourne, Warwick, UK 9 University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; 10 Pennsylvania StateUniversity, University Park, PA, USASexual mating has not been recorded in any of the plant pathogenic Verticilliumspecies but as ascomycetes they are presumably derived from species which wereonce sexual. Two idiomorphic genes with DNA binding motifs determine mating typein many fungi. Such genes determining mating type have been reported in otherasexual fungi and we have looked for them in Verticillium.A MAT1-2-1 gene (with an HMG-box motif) has been reported from Japaneseand other isolates of V. dahliae (Usami et al, 2009, Phys. Mol. Pl Path. 73, 133) butthis group have not reported finding a MAT1-1-1 gene (which should carry an alphaboxmotif). Building both on the work of Usami et al. and the sequence coming fromthe Verticillium genome sequencing project we here report the presence of bothmating type idiomorphs in isolates of V. dahliae. We have also found a MAT1-2-1gene homologue in Non-Lucerne isolates of V. albo-atrum whilst Lucerne isolates ofV. albo-atrum carry the MAT1-1-1 idiomorph. Within the two idiomorphs there aresequence variants and preliminary data suggests this variation may correlate withother properties, probably as an indicator of clonal lineages rather than causallyrelated.Long-spored isolates from cruciferous hosts (V. longisporum) are interspecificamphihaploid hybrids and as expected these carry two distinct copies of the matingtype locus. However these have sequences distinct from either of the haploid species.The significance of this in relation to the origins of these isolates will be discussed.27