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Comparison of gene expression in trap cells and vegetative hyphae of the nematophagous fungus Monacrosporium haptotylum

Dag Ahrén^,

Margareta Tholander

Csaba Fekete

Department of Microbial Ecology, Lund University, Ecology Building, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden

Correspondence
Anders Tunlid
Anders.Tunlid{at}mbioekol.lu.se

Nematode-trapping fungi enter the parasitic stage by developing specific morphological structures called traps. The global patterns of gene expression in traps and mycelium of the fungus Monacrosporium haptotylum were compared. The trap of this fungus is a unicellular spherical structure called the knob, which develops on the apex of a hyphal branch. RNA was isolated from knobs and mycelium and hybridized to a cDNA array containing probes of 2822 EST clones of M. haptotylum. Despite the fact that the knobs and mycelium were grown in the same medium, there were substantial differences in the patterns of genes expressed in the two cell types. In total, 23·3 % (657 of 2822) of the putative genes were differentially expressed in knobs versus mycelium. Several of these genes displayed sequence similarities to genes known to be involved in regulating morphogenesis and cell polarity in fungi. Among them were several putative homologues for small GTPases, such as rho1, rac1 and ras1, and a rho GDP dissociation inhibitor (rdi1). Several homologues to genes involved in stress response, protein synthesis and protein degradation, transcription, and carbon metabolism were also differentially expressed. In the last category, a glycogen phosphorylase (gph1) gene homologue, one of the most upregulated genes in the knobs as compared to mycelium, was characterized. A number of the genes that were differentially expressed in trap cells are also known to be regulated during the development of infection structures in plant-pathogenic fungi. Among them, a gas1 (mas3) gene homologue (designated gks1), which is specifically expressed in appressoria of the rice blast fungus, was characterized.

Microarray raw data are available at the EBI-EMBL ArrayExpress database (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress) (accession no. E-MEXP-250).

A comparison of the primary structure of the M. haptotylum gph1 protein with the phosphorylases of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is available in Supplementary Fig. S1a, and a phylogeny of glycogen phosphorylases in Supplementary Fig. S1b, with the online version of this paper at http://mic.sgmjournals.org/.

Present address: European Bioinformatic Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK.

These authors contributed equally to this work.