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SESSION 4: GENETICS OF HOSTS – PLANT RESISTANCE TO FUSARIUM,
VARIETY DEVELOPMENT
P103 - RNA-Sequencing as a tool for the analysis of
the pathosystem maize-Fusarium verticillioides
A. Lanubile, V. Maschietto, A. Marocco
Institute of Agronomy, Genetics and Field Crops, University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Via Emilia
Parmense 84, 29122 Piacenza, Italy
E-mail: alessandra.lanubile@unicatt.it
Fusarium verticillioides is the causal agent of Fusarium ear rot in maize and
contaminates the grain with fumonisins, a family of mycotoxins that affects feed
and food. Concern is increasing about the fumonisins because of emerginig
evidences of their involvement in several human and animal diseases.
To clarify the molecular processes undergoing in maize upon infection, the RNA-
Seq technology has been applied to characterize the expression profile of
resistant and susceptible kernels of maize 72 hours after F. verticillioides
infection.
More than 100 million sequence reads were generated for condition
(infected/uninfected). The sequence reads were analyzed to measure gene
expression levels, to detect alternative splicing events and single nucleotide
polymorphisms. We observed 2,006 and 2,629 differentially expressed genes 72
hours after infection for the resistant and susceptible maize genotypes,
respectively, of which 927 were in common and showed 5,342 SNPs variants.
About 320,000 and 175,000 reads mapped on Fusarium genome in the
susceptible and resistant genotypes, respectively, and 129 fungal genes were
differentially regulated in both lines. This exhaustive overview of gene expression
dynamics demonstrates the utility of RNA-Seq for identifying single nucleotide
polymorphisms and describing how plant transcriptomes change during pathogen
infection. The identification of differentially expressed plant genes that interact
with fungus will produce useful tools for the identification of candidate genes, the
development of molecular markers and their use for selection of resistant maize
genotypes by means of marker assisted selection.
Keywords: RNA-Seq, candidate genes, Fusarium verticillioides, Zea mays
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