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Departamento de Genética, Edif C5,1 Departamento de Biología Celular, Fisiología e Inmunología, Edif C6, Universidad de Córdoba, Campus Universitario de Rabanales, E-14071 Córdoba, Spain2
Received 21 September 2007/ Accepted 25 October 2007
A new myosin motor-like chitin synthase gene, chsVb, has been identified in the vascular wilt fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici. Phylogenetic analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence of the chsVb chitin synthase 2 domain (CS2) revealed that ChsVb belongs to class VII chitin synthases. The ChsVb myosin motor-like domain (MMD) is shorter than the MMD of class V chitin synthases and does not contain typical ATP-binding motifs. Targeted disrupted single (
chsVb) and double (
chsV
chsVb) mutants were unable to infect and colonize tomato plants or grow invasively on tomato fruit tissue. These strains were hypersensitive to compounds that interfere with fungal cell wall assembly, produced lemon-like shaped conidia, and showed swollen balloon-like structures in hyphal subapical regions, thickened walls, aberrant septa, and intrahyphal hyphae. Our results suggest that the chsVb gene is likely to function in polarized growth and confirm the critical importance of cell wall integrity in the complex infection process of this fungus.
Published ahead of print on 9 November 2007.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://ec.asm.org/.
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