10th INTERNATIONAL VERTICILLIUM SYMPOSIUM 16-20 ...

TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS IN VERTICILLIUM DAHLIAEAND V. ALBO-ATRUMS.G. AMYOTTE 1 (samyott@uwo.ca), K.F. DOBINSON 1,2 (katherine.dobinson@agr.gc.ca),P. VERONESE 3 (paola_veronese@ncsu.edu), S.J. KLOSTERMAN 4(sklosterman@pw.ars.usda.gov), K.V. SUBBARAO 4,5 (kvsubbarao@ucdavis.edu), S.E.GOLD 6 (sgold@uga.edu), S. KANG 7 (sxk55@email.psu.edu), L.-J. MA 8(lijun@broad.mit.edu)1 Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London ON, Canada;2 Southern Crop Protection and Food Research Centre, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, London,ON, Canada;3 Department of Plant Pathology, NC State University, Raleigh NC, USA;4 USDA-ARS, Salinas CA, USA;5 Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, Davis CA, USA;6 University of Georgia, Athens GA, USA;7 Department of Plant Pathology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park PA, USA;8Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge MA, USAGenome sequences have recently become available for the filamentous fungiVerticillium dahliae and V. albo-atrum. Since transposable elements have previouslybeen implicated in fungal genome evolution, we set out to characterize such elementsin the genome of V. dahliae isolate VdLs.17. Several DNA transposons and LINElikeretroelements were identified, as well as five long terminal repeat (LTR)retroelements, which will be the primary focus here. Two of the LTR elements wereof the copia class, one of which (VdLTRE1) contains the DNA fingerprint sequenceE18. The other three elements (VdLTREs2, 3 and 4) are closely related gypsy classelements, and highly similar to the Fusarium oxysporum and Colletotrichumgraminicola elements Skippy and Cgret, respectively, with LTRE3 containing the V.dahliae retrotransposon sequence previously identified by Usami et al, 2005.Although there is evidence for RIP-like mutation of the LTR elements, full-lengthcopies of the elements have been identified in VdLs.17, suggesting that some or all ofthem are active. Consistent with that possibility, ESTs have been obtained thatcorrespond to each element. Variation of retroelement distribution will be describedwith respect to genome evolution and the potential use of these elements as diagnosticmarkers.54