Project description:Comparative transcriptome analysis of virulent and avirulent strains of Colletotrichum falcatum to unravel the pathogenic variations.
Project description:The project is aimed at analysing the comparitive proteomics of red rot pathogen, C. falcatum, during red rot infection in sugarcane. The differentially abundant proteins shall be used to identify the corresponding genes.
Project description:Here we describe the identification and regulation of a novel dsRNA virus in Colletotrichum higginsianum. High throughput sequencing of small RNAs and strand-specific RNA-seq was performed on single gene knock-out mutants created for each RNAi component gene: rdr1, rdr2, rdr3, dcl1, dcl2, ago1, and ago2, and the double mutant: ∆dcl1∆dcl2. De novo assembly of the ∆dcl1 RNA-seq data identified two contigs that represented the forward and reverse strands of an uncharacterized dsRNA virus, designated here as Colletotrichum higginsianum non-segmented dsRNA virus 1 (ChNRV1). We found increased presence of the viral RNA in the RNA-seq datasets of the ∆dcl1, ∆dcl1dcl2, and ∆ago1 strains, suggesting that these genes are required for control of the virus. We show that viral small RNAs co-immunoprecipitate with a 6xFLAG-3xHIS-tagged AGO1 protein by sequencing the small RNAs from immunoprecipitated fractions. Additionally, analyses of the small RNA datasets from the RNAi mutants revealed control of the virus through small RNA-mediated silencing required both AGO1 and DCL1.