A molecular method to assess Phytophthora diversity in environmental samples.

Current molecular detection methods for the genus Phytophthora are specific to a few key species rather than the whole genus and this is a recognized weakness of protocols for ecological studies and international plant health legislation. In the present study a molecular approach was developed to detect Phytophthora species in soil and water samples using novel sets of genus-specific primers designed against the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions. Two different rDNA primer sets were tested: one assay amplified a long product including the ITS1, 5.

Combining next-generation pyrosequencing with microarray for large scale expression analysis in non-model species.

Background: The next generation sequencing technologies provide new options to characterize the transcriptome and to develop affordable tools for functional genomics. We describe here an innovative approach for this purpose and demonstrate its potential also for non-model species.

Results: The method we developed is based on 454 sequencing of 3' cDNA fragments from a normalized library constructed from pooled RNAs to generate, through de novo reads assembly, a large catalog of unique transcripts in organisms for which a comprehensive collection of transcripts or the complete genome sequence, is not available.