Publication of the month December 2010
Date: december 2010
Location: An international team of scientists, which includes researchers from CBSG, has cracked the genetic code of a plant pathogen that causes downy mildew disease
An international team of scientists, which includes researchers
from CBSG, has cracked the genetic code of a plant pathogen that
causes downy mildew disease. Downy mildews are a widespread class
of destructive diseases that cause major losses to crops as diverse
as maize, grapes, and lettuce. The paper describing the genome
sequence of the downy mildew pathogen Hyaloperonospora
arabidopsidis, which attacks the widely studied model plant
Arabidopsis thaliana, appeared in the December 10 issue of the
journal Science (Volume 330, pages 1449-1551).
In the paper, the sequence of H. arabidopsidis is compared with
other fully sequenced genomes of destructive plant pathogens to
shed light on the differences in the ways microbes interact with
their host and how those differences evolve. The payoff could be
new ways to investigate how these pathogens wreak havoc and, in the
long-term, finding how to prevent billions of dollars of losses for
farmers growing crops across the globe.
Click on cover to read the article.
