The strawberry pathotype of Alternaria alternata produces the host-specific AF-toxin and causes black spot of strawberry. The genes in the toxin gene cluster are currently being identified and characterized. In this study, a genomic cosmid clone, pcAFT-2, was structurally characterized. This cosmid contains AFT homologs, which were found to be involved in AF-toxin biosynthesis. These homologs were designated AFTR-2 and AFT3-2. Four new open reading frames (ORFs) (AFT9-1, AFT10-1, AFT11-1, AFT12-1) and two transposon-like sequences (TLS-S4, TLS-S5) were also identified. These ORFs were shown to encode for polyketide synthase, acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, P450 monooxygenase, and an oxidoreductase, respectively. Transcripts of all the ORFs were detected. DNA gel blot analysis detected homologs of these four ORFs only in the tangerine, strawberry, and Japanese pear pathotypes, which share a common 9,10-epoxy-8-hydroxy-9-methyldecatrienoic acid moiety in their toxin structure. Targeting of AFT10-1, which encodes an acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, produced single-and double-copy mutants with highly reduced numbers of lesions on host leaves concomitant with reduced toxin production, confirming its role in pathogenicity. Thus, AFT10-1 exists in multiple copies in the genome of Alternaria alternata; and based on the presence of homologs in the tangerine and Japanese pear pathotypes, it isThe nucleotide sequence data of pcAFT-2 is available in DDBJ/ EMBL/GenBank databases under accession number AB179766 involved in the formation of the 9,10-epoxy-8-hydroxy-9-methyl-decatrienoic acid moiety of the toxin molecule.
copies of TLS-S1, TLS-S2, and TLS-S3, respectively, and a single copy of TLS-S5 on the CD chromosome were estimated by DNA gel blot analysis. The remaining copy of TLS-S1 and the three copies of TLS-S2 were isolated and identified to also encode incomplete ORFs.Thus, it appears that all copies of the transposon-like sequences identified are inactivated elements (fossils) unique to the CD chromosome in the genome of the strawberry pathotype.
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