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| Author(s): |
Joan Grande Barau
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Biologia |
| Defense date: | 2011-08-26 |
| Examining board members: |
Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira;
Marisa Vieira de Queiroz;
Antonio Rossi Filho;
Fabio Papes;
Marcelo Menossi
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| Advisor: | Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira; Johana Rincones |
| Abstract | |
Cocoa's Witches Broom Disease (WBD) is caused by the hemibiotrophic interaction between the Basidiomycete fungus Moniliopthora perniciosa and plants of Theobroma cacao. One remarkable feature of WBD is its unusual long biotrophic phase in which the fungal growth is restricted to the apoplastic space of plants. We compared differential gene expression between biotrophic and saprotrophic-like hyphae in vitro and proposed based on microarray and EST results that the maintenance of biotrophic-like cultures of M. perniciosa in vitro is subject to Carbon source regulation, especially regarding the use of glycerol as a preferential carbon source for biotrophy. To further gain insight into the carbon source regulation of WBD biotrophic phase in vivo, we characterized glycerol utilization using fungal expression markers during the initial phases of infection. We also characterized the carbon source fluctuations in the apoplast of healthy and infected cocoa seedlings. We showed that healthy cocoa plants possess a rhythmic carbon cycle in the apoplast that is in fine tune with periodical leaf flushing, expansion and photosynthetic maturation. WBD completely disrupts the carbon cycle in the apoplast of infected plants and also arrests leaf photosynthesis at pre sink-to-source transition levels. It was also possible to distinguish two different phases of carbon availability in the apoplast. The two phases correlated with fungal growth rates, the expression of a characterized necrosis inducing gene and the development of a tumor-like callus at the base of infected stems that completely disrupted normal vascular communication between healthy and diseased parts of the plant. A possible correlation between carbon starvation and phase switch from biotrophic to necrotrophic was explored and the evolution of the vascular-disrupting callus was discussed in the view of the tradeoff between the physiological behavior of infected tissues as sinks and the avoidance of nutrient remobilization during infected tissue senescence. Finally, we focused on the development of functional genomic tools for the study of gene function in this pathogen. As a proof-of-concept, we successfully obtained fungal strains expressing the autophagy related gene MpATG8 fused with GFP reporter, in which was possible to visualize the autophagy process in vivo by fluorescence imaging. In addition we also obtained the first successful gene targeting knockout of MpKu70, an M. perniciosa homologous of a gene essential to NHEJ in Eukaryotes. MpKu70 knockouts strains have reported phenotypes of increased homologous recombination, and the M. perniciosa strain may be an important platform for future functional studies of genes important in witches broom disease pathogenesis (AU) | |