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SESSION 1: FUSARIUM – GENETICS, GENOMICS AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
P10 - Interspecific Hybrids between Fusarium fujikuroi
and Fusarium proliferatum
N. M. I. Mohamed Nor¹ , ², B. Salleh¹, C. P. Toomajian², J. P. Stack², J. F.
Leslie²
¹School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Pulau Pinang, Malaysia; ²Department
of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506-5502, USA
E-mail: jfl@ksu.edu
Interspecific hybrids offer unusual opportunities to study speciation and the
segregation of traits that differ between species but that are often fixed within a
species. We have recovered strains that appear to be hybrids between F.
fujikuroi and F. proliferatum from rice fields in Southeast Asia and from a native
tallgrass prairie in the United States. These hybrids can cross with standard
mating type testers of both species and have DNA sequence profiles that are
consistent with their putative hybrid conditions. The existence of these hybrids
may indicate that reticulate evolution is occurring or that these two species have
yet to completely finish the speciation process. We also have created such
hybrids under laboratory conditions by crossing strains of opposite mating type on
carrot agar. Based on the segregation of AFLPs, there are some fingerprint
patterns that reoccur independently multiple times amongst the progeny,
suggesting non-random segregation of at least portions of the genome. The
parental strains differ in numerous traits, including secondary metabolite
production and pathogenicity towards apples, onions and rice. Evaluation of
recombinant progeny is providing the opportunity to identify portions of the
genome involved in the speciation process and to identify regulatory and
structural genes of importance in pathogenicity and secondary metabolite
production.
Keywords: speciation, hybridization, secondary metabolites, recombination
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