Identification of Genetic Determinants that Facilitate Development of B. cinerea at Low Temperature and its Postharvest Pathogenicity

Botrytis cinerea is the postharvest pathogen of many agricultural produce with table grapes, strawberries and tomatoes as major targets. The high efficiency with which B. cinerea causes disease on these produce during storage is attributed in part due to its exceptional ability to develop at very low temperature. Our major goal was to understand the genetic determinants which enable it to develop at low temperature. The specific research objectives were: 1. Identify expression pattern of genes in a coldenriched cDNA library. 2. Identify B. cinerea orthologs of cold-induced genes 3. Profile protein expression and secretion at low temperature on strawberry and grape supplemented media. 4. Test novel methods for the functional analysis of coldresponsive genes. Objective 1 was modified during the research because a microarray platform became available and it allowed us to probe the whole set of candidate genes according to the sequence of 2 strains of the fungus, BO5.10 and T4. The results of this experiment allowed us to validate some of our earlier observations which referred to genes which were the product of a SSH suppression-subtraction library. Before the microarray became available during 2008 we also analyzed the expression of 15 orthologs of cold-induced genes and some of these results were also validated by the microarray experiment. One of our goals was also to perform functional analysis of cold-induced genes. This goal was hampered for 3 years because current methodology for transformation with ‘protoplasts’ failed to deliver knockouts of bacteriordopsin-like (bR) gene which was our primary target for functional analysis. Consequently, we developed 2 alternative transformation platforms, one which involves an air-gun based technique and another which involves DNA injection into sclerotia. Both techniques show great promise and have been validated using different constructs. This contribution is likely to serve the scientific community in the near future. Using these technologies we generated gene knockout constructs of 2 genes and have tested there effect on survival of the fungus at low temperature. With reference to the bR genes our results show that it has a significant effect on mycelial growth of the B. cinerea and the mutants have retarded development at extreme conditions of ionic stress, osmotic stress and low temperature. Another gene of unknown function, HP1 is still under analysis. An ortholog of the yeast cold-induced gene, CCH1 which encodes a calcium tunnel and was shown to be cold-induced in B. cinerea was recently cloned and used to complement yeast mutants and rescue them from cold-sensitivity. One of the significant findings of the microarray study involves a T2 ribonuclease which was validated to be cold-induced by qPCR analysis. This and other genes will serve for future studies. In the frame of the study we also screened a population of 631 natural B. cinerea isolates for development at low temperature and have identified several strains with much higher and lower capacity to develop at low temperature. These strains are likely to be used in the future as candidates for further functional analysis. The major conclusions from the above research point to specific targets of cold-induced genes which are likely to play a role in cold tolerance. One of the most significant observations from the microarray study is that low temperature does not induce ‘general stress response in B. cinerea, which is in agreement to its exceptional capacity to develop at low temperature. Due to the tragic murder of the Co-PI Maria R. Davis and GopiPodila on Feb. 2010 it is impossible to deliver their contribution to the research. The information of the PI is that they failed to deliver objective 4 and none of the information which relates to objective 3 has been delivered to the PI before the murder or in a visit to U. Alabama during June, 2010. Therefore, this report is based solely on the IS data.