Transcriptome analysis on Verticillium-infected tomato to identify genes involved in host defense

PO-52 Transcriptome analysis on Verticillium-infected tomato to identify genes involved in host defense. Ermis Yanes-Paz1,2*, Sajid Rehman1, Yuling BAI1, Ramón Santos Bermudez2, Orlando Borrás-Hidalgo3, Bart P.H.J. Thomma1 1Laboratory of Plant Breeding, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 1, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands. 2Bioplants Center, Ciego de Avila, Cuba. 3Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Havana, Cuba * [email protected] Despite the economical importance of Verticillium spp., relatively little is known about the molecular basis of Verticillium pathogenicity and host resistance against this fungus. In the current work comparative transcriptomics was performed on susceptible and resistant tomato lines of the cultivar MoneyMaker inoculated with a race 1 isolate of Verticillium using cDNA-AFLP in an attempt to identify key components involved in Ve1 mediated resistance. As a resistant line, Ve1 transgenic MoneyMaker was used (Fradin et al., 2009). A total number of 176 selective primer combinations were tested and 1434 differentially expressed transcript-derived fragments (DE-TDFs) were identified. As the DE-TDFs that are up-regulated specifically in resistant tomato upon Verticillium inoculation (302 DE-TDFs) may be involved in host resistance, these are functionally analyzed using virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS). It was shown that silencing 54 out of 192 TDFs reproducible compromised Ve1 mediated Verticillium resistance. Further study on five selected candidates have shown that the silencing of three of them leads to an increased of fungus colonization.