BioSample

The project aims to establish and disseminate functional genomics resources that will facilitate rapid characterization of the wheat pathogenic fungus Mycosphaerella graminicola. The fungus causes Septoria leaf blotch disease, which is a severe constraint on wheat production. There is an urgent need for new durable disease control strategies. The project will generate the complete set of M. graminicola predicted gene sequences as a Gateway compatible ORFeome library allowing rapid generation of tagged alleles for protein localization, protein interaction studies and to facilitate rapid targeted gene deletion. In parallel, the project will generate a suite of destination vectors; a set of validated inducible promoters to modulate gene expression in a controllable manner; a comprehensive set of M. graminicola strains in which each major cytoskeletal component and sub-cellular compartment is fluorescently tagged to allow live cell imaging studies that can address infection-associated development and the functional analysis of virulence genes. These resources will be made freely available. A full set of experimental protocols will also be developed and bioinformatic resources publicly disseminated. When considered together, this work will provide the tools to circumvent the major obstacles to characterizing the biology of this economically significant pathogen, allowing rapid progress to be made in understanding one of the world's most important cereal pathogens and developing new methods for disease control. In this way it will significantly add to the investment in sequencing the wheat genome. Furthermore, combating the disease will constitute a fundamental advance in addressing global food security, a BBSRC strategic priority.