Can silencing of transposons contribute to variation in effector gene expression inPhytophthora infestans?

Can silencing of transposons contribute to variation in effector gene expression in Phytophthora infestans?

Transposable elements are ubiquitous residents in eukaryotic genomes. Often considered to be genomic parasites, they can lead to dramatic changes in genome organization, gene expression, and gene evolution. The oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans has evolved a genome organization where core biology genes are predominantly located in genome regions that have relatively few resident tr...

Internuclear gene silencing in Phytophthora infestans.

Transformation of the diploid oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans with antisense, sense, and promoter-less constructs of the coding sequence of the elicitin gene inf1 resulted in transcriptional silencing of both the transgenes and the endogenous gene. Since heterokaryons obtained by somatic fusion of an inf1-silenced transgenic strain and a wild-type strain displayed stable gene sil...

Strain Specific Factors Control Effector Gene Silencing in Phytophthora sojae

The Phytophthora sojae avirulence gene Avr3a encodes an effector that is capable of triggering immunity on soybean plants carrying the resistance gene Rps3a. P. sojae strains that express Avr3a are avirulent to Rps3a plants, while strains that do not are virulent. To study the inheritance of Avr3a expression and virulence towards Rps3a, genetic crosses and self-fertilizations were performed. A ...

How Political Science Can Contribute to Public Health: A Response to Gagnon and Colleagues

Phenotypic diversification by gene silencing in Phytophthora plant pathogens

Advances in genome sequencing technologies have enabled generation of unprecedented information on genome content and organization. Eukaryote genomes in particular may contain large populations of transposable elements (TEs) and other repeated sequences. Active TEs can result in insertional mutations, altered transcription levels and ectopic recombination of DNA. The genome of the oomycete plan...