Abstract
Gibberella zeae (anamorph, Fusarium graminearum) is an important pathogen of cereal crops found in many regions of the world. In this study, we have characterized two auxotrophic strains, designated S4B1279 and S4B3008, which were discovered from a collection of insertional mutants of G. zeae generated by restriction enzyme-mediated integration (REMI). Both mutant strains exhibited pleiotropic phenotypic changes that include reduction of mycelial growth and virulence and abolished sexual reproduction. Molecular analysis of the REMI mutants has shown that the auxotrophy of S4B1279 is due to a mutation of the ARG2 gene encoding an acetylglutamate synthase, and the auxotrophy of S4B3008 is due to a mutation of the ADE5 gene encoding a phosphoribosylamine-glycine ligase. Subsequent gene disruption and complementation studies have confirmed the functions for ARG2 and ADE5, respectively, in G. zeae. Our study has demonstrated the feasibility of using the REMI technique in studying G. zeae virulence mechanisms, in addition to providing two new selectable markers allowing genetic transformation of the fungus.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by a grant (CG1413) from the Crop Functional Genomics Center of the 21st Century Frontier Research Program funded by the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology. J. E. K. and K. M. were supported by graduate fellowship from the Korean Ministry of Education through the Brain Korea 21 project.
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Communicated by J. Heitman.
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Kim, JE., Myong, K., Shim, WB. et al. Functional characterization of acetylglutamate synthase and phosphoribosylamine-glycine ligase genes in Gibberella zeae . Curr Genet 51, 99–108 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-006-0110-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-006-0110-1