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SESSION 1: FUSARIUM – GENETICS, GENOMICS AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
P6 - A retrotransposon based approach for the
detection of intraspecific variation among Fusarium
oxysporum formae speciales
S. Tonti 1 , M. Dal Prà 1 , P. Nipoti 2 , I. Alberti 1
1 INRAN - Istituto Nazionale per la Ricerca degli Alimenti e la Nutrizione, Via Ca’ Nova Zampieri 37, S.
Giovanni Lupatoto (VR), Italy; 2 DipSA - Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Alma Mater Studiorum,
Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Fanin 40, 40127 Bologna, Italy.
E-mail: i.alberti@ense.it
Fusarium oxysporum (Schlechtendahl emend. Snyder and Hansen) is the most
diffused and destructive fungal plant pathogen. Its division in to formae speciales,
accordingly to the difference in host specificity, is crucial for phytopathological
diagnosis and phytosanitary purposes. To date, different approaches have been
attempted in order to develop specific primers able to discriminate between the
different formae speciales. Retrotransposon based techniques are good tools for
the detection of the intraspecific variation among microorganisms. Furthermore
polymorphic DNA bands obtained can be cloned and then sequenced in order to
design specific primers.
We tried a REMAP (Retrotransposon Microsatellite Amplified Polymorphism)
analysis on 18 strains belonging to 10 different formae speciales. To this aim four
different PCR reactions were carried on combining 4 SSR primers ((AG)8G,
(GA)8T, (GA)8C, (AC)8T) with a primer designed on the LTR region of the
retrotransposon skippy. Banding patterns obtained were scored manually.
Genetic distance between strains and the resulting UPMGA tree were calculated
with Nei and Li/Dice algorithm implemented in the Freetree software.
Polymorphic bands were not detected, while DNA banding pattern resulted to be
distinctive of some formae speciales. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to
characterize the F. oxysporum species complex with a REMAP analysis.
Keywords: Fusarium oxysporum, REMAP, formae speciales
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