Publications by authors named "Marlis Dahl"
The hemibiotrophic plant pathogen infects and in combination with , represents an important model system to investigate various ecologically important fungal pathogens and their infection strategies. After penetration of plant cells by appressoria, establishes large biotrophic primary hyphae in the first infected cell. Shortly thereafter, a switch to necrotrophic growth occurs leading to the invasion of neighboring cells by secondary hyphae.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mob family proteins are conserved between animals, plants and fungi and are essential for the activation of NDR kinases that control crucial cellular processes like cytokinesis, proliferation and morphology.
Results: We identified a hypomorphic allele of ChMOB2 in a random insertional mutant (vir-88) of the hemibiotrophic ascomycete fungus Colletotrichum higginsianum. The mutant is impaired in conidiation, host penetration and virulence on Arabidopsis thaliana.
Article Synopsis
- We used Agrobacterium tumefaciens to insert mutations in Colletotrichum higginsianum and identified 75 mutants with reduced pathogenic effects from a pool of 7200.
- Among these, 19 mutants showed issues with host penetration, while 17 were impaired in the later infection stages; we successfully pinpointed T-DNA insertions in 16 mutants.
- We developed a gene knockout method by inactivating the Ku80 protein, and found that deletion of a specific gene, ChPMA2, led to mutants that create non-pathogenic appressoria, indicating its crucial role in fungal infection processes.