Project description:Citrus greening or huanglongbing (HLB) is a devastating disease of citrus. HLB is associated with the phloem-limited fastidious prokaryotic alpha-proteobacterium Candidatus Liberibacter spp. In this report, we used sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) leaf tissue infected with 'Ca. Liberibacter asiaticus' and compared this with healthy controls. Investigation of the host response was examined with citrus microarray hybridization based on 30,171 sets expressed sequence tag sequences from several citrus species and hybrids. The microarray analysis indicated that HLB infection significantly affected expression of 624 genes whose encoded proteins were categorized according to function. The categories included genes associated with sugar metabolism, plant defense, phytohormone, and cell wall metabolism, as well as 14 other gene categories. Young, healthy Valencia sweet orange (C. sinensis) plants were graft inoculated with budwood from Ca. L. asiaticus-infected citrus plants. Prior to the innocualtion, the plants were confirmed to be Ca. L. asiaticus-free in ordinary and quantitative PCR tests. The presence of the bacteria in the inoculated plants was confirmed in both conventional and quantitative PCR with specific primers to Ca. L. asiaticus. The stem and root samples used for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays were obtained from three symptomatic and three healthy control trees of similar size, approximately 1 year after inoculation.
Project description:HLB is suggested to be caused by the phloem-limited fastidious prokaryotic α-proteobacterium “Candidatus Liberibacter spp.” Previous studies focused on the proteome and transcriptome analyses of citrus 5 to 35-week-after “Ca. L. spp.” inoculation. In this study, gene expression profiles was analyzed using mandarin of Citrus reticulate Blanco cv. jiaogan leaves after 2-year infection with “Ca. L. asiaticus”. The Affymetrix GeneChip® citrus genome were applied to study the molecular pathways mediated by “Ca. L. asiaticus” inoculated 3-year-old jiaogan seedlings. Each of them was graft-inoculated with one sweet orange scions with or without “Ca. L. asiaticus” in Dectember, 2009. RNA samples from three mandarin trees infected with 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' and three uninfected trees were used for affymatrix genochip
