engleski

The Presence of Transposable Elements Boty and Flipper in the Sympatric Subpopulations of Plant Pathogenic Fungus Botryotinia fuckeliana on Grapevine and Strawberry

The fungus Botryotinia fuckeliana (de Bary) Whetzel is the teleomorph stage of the plant pathogenic fungus known as Botrytis cinerea Pers.:Fr., which as the anamorph causes grey mould disease on more than 200 cultivated plants. In agroecological conditions of Croatia this pathogen causes an important disease of grapevine and strawberry, which can completely devastate the harvest in years with high moisture levels.This necrotrophic, polyphagous and heterothalic plant pathogenic fungus presents extreme genotype and phenotype variability and exceptional adaptability. The causes of genotype variability can be heterocariosis, heteroploidy, dsRNA and virus-like particles and transposable elements. The phenotype variability is observed in the great differentiation of all morphological structures of anamorphic and teleomorphic stage, as well as in the resistance to fungicides. According to recent research the species is divided into four sibiling sympatric subpopulations, based on the content of transposable elements (TEs). TEs are parts of the DNA molecule which can change their position inside of a genome, that means to change their position or loci on the chromosomes causing appearances such as: gene inactivation, reactivation of pseudogenes, gene expression disorder, and mutation type: deletion, insertion, inversion, and translocation. Two "TEs" have been discovered in B. cinerea ; gypsy-like LTR retrotransposone Boty and Tc1/mariner/Pogo transposone Flipper. The sympatric subpopulation containing both TEs has been named Botrytis transposa, while the sympatric subpopulation not containing them is called Botrytis vacuma. The other two subpopulations have only one of this TEs, Boty (Boty only sympatric subpopulation) or Flipper (Flipper only sympatric subpopulaton). In order to determine the connection between these sympatric subpopulations and presence on host plants, isolates of fungus were collected from grapevine and strawberry. The content of TEs was determined by PCR molecular analyses, usings specific primers. The presence of sympatric subpopulations on strawbery was: B.transposa 41%, B.vacuma 23%, Flipper only 26% and Boty only 9%. On grepevine was: B. transposa 84%, Boty only 11 % and B.vacuma 5 %. It be concluded that B. transposa has the greatest affinity for grapevine, in contrast to strawberry, where the other sympatric subpopulations were present in higer percentages, especially Flipper only and B. vacuma.

Botryotinia fuckeliana; Boty; Flipper; Grapevine; Plant pathogenic fungus; Strawberry; Transposable elements

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