Award details

303a: Fungal morphogenesis and pathogenicity

Reference	BBS/E/H/00032115
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor John Michael Whipps
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Timothy Elliott
Institution	University of Warwick
Department	Warwick HRI
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	809,500
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2000
End date	31/03/2003
Duration	36 months

Abstract

Fungi play key roles in horticulture as plant pathogens, potentially as biocontrol agents and as a food directly in the form of edible homobasidiomycete mushrooms such as Agaricus bisporus. Despite such different roles, the fungal life cycle can be characterised simply as spore germination, hyphal growth, differentiation into fruiting structures and sporulation. The life cycle may also involve differentiation into resting structures such as thick walled mycelium or sclerotia, and pathogenesis related structures such as infection cushions, appressoria and haustoria. However, little is known of the changes in gene activity during these processes in horticulturally important fungi that differ in their econutritional modes. Consequently, work is being carried out to identify, isolate and characterise genes and proteins important in morphogenesis and pathogenicity in fungi with different econutritional modes and to examine their regulation and function. Specific objectives have been identified building on the existing platform of knowledge at the genome, gene and functional level for key fungi at HRI involving work on the sclerotial mycoparasite Coniothyrium minitans (an obligate necrotroph which attacks sclerotia of the fungal plant pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum) and the edible saprotroph Agaricus bisporus. Work on C. minitans is concentrating on (a) identifying surface glycoproteins of conidia and germlings involved with interactions with the host fungus S. sclerotiorum and (b) on identifying novel pathogenicity genes using REMI.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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