Journal of Plant Pathology (2003) 85, p. 295 (Piccolo et al.)

F. Piccolo, F. Scala and G. Del Sorbo (2003)
Exploitation of RNA silencing for functional analysis of BcatrO, an ABC transporter-encoding gene of Botrytis cinerea
Journal of Plant Pathology 85 (4), 295-295
X Meeting, Italian Society for Plant Pathology (poster)
Abstract: RNA silencing is a recently discovered gene regulatory mechanism in which double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) induces the degradation of homologous RNA sequences. It occurs in a variety of eukaryotic organisms and has been variously described as "posttranscriptional gene silencing" (PTGS) or "RNA-mediated virus resistance" (RMVR) in plants, "quelling" in Neurospora and "RNA interference" (RNAi) in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila. RNA silencing has natural roles in antiviral defence, genome protection, and developmental regulation of gene expression. In fungal biotechnology, RNA silencing could be a powerful technology for functional genomics, particularly suitable for the systematic analysis of gene families (i.e. the ABC transporters) or genes with redundant functions. We transformed the phytopathogenic fungus Botrytis cinerea with a sense construct of the coding sequence of the ABC transporter gene BcatrO to induce RNA silencing of the mentioned gene. A 283 bp fragment of BcatrO was put under the control of the oliC and trpC regulatory elements of A. nidulans. The construct was inserted in a plasmid carrying a nourseothricin resistance cassette and transformed either in a wild-type strain of B. cinerea and in two mutants previously disrupted in BcatrA or BcatrB (two genes encoding ABC transporters), respectively. Stable nourseothricin resistant transformants were obtained from all three recipient strains. The phenotypic characterization of putative BcatrO-silenced trasformants is in course.
Database assignments for author(s): Felice Scala

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
molecular biology - genes

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Botrytis cinerea