Award details

401e: Pathogenicity traits in the mycoparasite Coniothyrium minitans

Reference	BBS/E/H/00032651
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor John Michael Whipps
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	University of Warwick
Department	Warwick HRI
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	387,000
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2003
End date	31/03/2005
Duration	24 months

Abstract

Plant pathogenic fungi are major constraints in crop production and novel, sustainable methods for their control are being sought. Biological disease control through the application of microbial inoculants is a possible strategy, and work at HRI has focussed on the sclerotial mycoparasite C. minitans which exhibits specificity for its sclerotium- forming hosts, allowing insight into novel fungal-fungal interaction processes. Some data on C. minitans cell surface characteristics such as hydrophobicity and glycoproteins have been obtained, REMI transformants with decreased pathogenicity are under examination, and the characterisation of antifungal metabolites is underway. Nevertheless, details of the factors controlling recognition and subsequent infection at the molecular level are sparse. Consequently, work is planned to identify and characterise genes and gene products involved in sclerotial infection by C. minitans and to examine changes in gene expression, with the aim of understanding the mechanisms of interaction in this unique mycoparasitic system. A range of methodologies will be employed: (1)Production of pathogenicity mutants through REMI and Agrobacterium mediated T-DNA tagging and their subsequent analysis to identify pathogenicity genes (2)Identification and cloning of genes differentially expressed at various stages of the infection process exploiting array technologies and suppressive subtractive hybridisations using genomic and stage-specific cDNA libraries (3)Function testing by gene silencing and reporter gene technology to explore temporal and spatial expression of key genes (4)Purification and identification of antifungal metabolites and molecular analysis of REMI transformants deficient in antibiotic expression

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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