Repetitive DNA and effectors in the compartmentalized genomes of Fusarium oxysporum species complex
P. Travers (1), Y. Zhang (1), L. J. MA (1). (1) University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, U.S.A.
<b><i>Fusarium oxysporum</i></b> species complex causes highly destructive Fusarium wilts in nearly all agriculturally important plants. In addition, some <i>F. oxysporum </i>strains can cause life-threatening infections in immunocompromised patients. An interesting point about <i>F. oxysporum</i> is that any pathogenic form exhibits high host specificity. Comparative genomics demonstrated that horizontal transfer of pathogenicity chromosomes conveys host-specific pathogenicity (Ma et al., 2010). With an overall objective to understand the correlation between genome dynamics and the evolving pathogenicity, this study compared the copy number variation of transposable elements among different pathogenic Fusarium genomes. We will describe methods we developed to survey copy numbers of transposable elements in <i>F. oxysporum</i> species complex using next-gen sequencing. The correlation of the expansion of certain transposable elements and the evolution of specific pathotypes will be discussed.
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