Phytophthora infestans is a highly destructive plant pathogen. It was the cause of the infamous Irish potato famine in the nineteenth century and remains to this day a significant global problem with associated costs estimated at $3 billion annually. Key to the success of this pathogen is the dispersal of free-swimming cells called zoospores. A poorly understood aspect of zoospore behaviour is ...

In eukaryotes phospholipase D (PLD) is involved in many cellular processes. Currently little is known about PLDs in oomycetes. Here we report that the oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans has a large repertoire of PLDs divided over six subfamilies: PXPH-PLD, PXTM-PLD, TM-PLD, PLD-likes, and type A and B sPLD-likes. Since the latter have signal peptides we developed a method using meta...

Pathogens belonging to the Oomycota, a group of heterokont, fungal-like organisms, are amongst the most notorious pathogens in agriculture. In particular, the obligate biotrophic downy mildews and the hemibiotrophic members of the genus Phytophthora are responsible for a huge variety of destructive diseases, including sudden oak death caused by P. ramorum, potato late blight caused by P. infest...

Infections of plants by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans typically result from zoospores, which develop from sporangia at cold temperatures. To help understand the relevant cold-induced signaling pathway, factors regulating the transcription of the zoosporogenesis-specific NIF (nuclear LIM-interactor-interacting factor) gene family were examined. Sequences required for inducing PinifC3 were ...

Phytophthora infestans is a destructive plant pathogen best known for causing the disease that triggered the Irish potato famine and remains the most costly potato pathogen to manage worldwide. Identification of P. infestan's elusive center of origin is critical to understanding the mechanisms of repeated global emergence of this pathogen. There are two competing theories, placing the origin in...

APCR and monozoospore plating was used to demonstrate a simultaneous presence of the mitochondria with mitochondrial DNA of haplotypes ILa and IIa in the mycelium of several Phytophthora infestans strains.

Elicitins are a family of structurally related proteins that induce hypersensitive response in specific plant species. Two Phytophthora infestans cDNAs, inf2A and inf2B, potentially encoding novel elicitin-like proteins, were isolated from a cDNA library made from infected potato tissue. Multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic analyses of 19 elicitins and elicitin-like proteins from nine ...

The potato late-blight disease is caused by the pseudofungus Phytophthora infestans (Oomycetes). This pathogen was of historical importance as it caused the Irish Potato Famine. There is currently a worldwide resurgence of the disease. Following worldwide migrations as well as being able to discriminate P. infestans from related species are key issues. We present sequence variation of five inte...

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is an important vegetable crop worldwide. Often times, its production is hindered by fungal diseases. Important fungal diseases limiting tomato production are late blight, caused by Phytophthora infestans, early blight, caused by Alternaria solanii, and septoria leaf spot, caused by Septoria lycopersici, fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporium fsp. oxysporium, ...

Lysobacter capsici AZ78, isolated from tobacco rhizosphere, effectively controls Phytophthora infestans and Plasmopara viticola on tomato and grapevine plants, respectively. We report the first draft genome sequence of the L. capsici species.