Genome Project Solutions

Jeffrey Boore is senior author on a manuscript published by the journal Science that reports the complete genome sequences of the oomycetes Phytophthora sojae, a soybean pathogen, and Phytophthora ramorum, which causes Sudden Oak Death Syndrome.  Evolutionary analysis of the complete gene sets of these organisms along with many others identifies a large component of their genomes have an evolutionary source as either the cyanobacterium that gave rise to the plastid or the red algae secondarily engulfed to give plastids to the larger group Chromalveolates.

The citation of the manuscript is: Tyler, B. M., S. Tripathi, X. Zhang, P. Dehal, R. Jiang, A. Aerts, F. D. Arredondo, L. Baxter, D. Bensasson, J. Beynon, J. Chapman, C. M. B. Damasceno, A. E. Dorrance, D. Dou, A. W. Dickerman, I. Dubchak, M. Garbelotto, M. Gijzen, S. G. Gordon, F. Govers, N. J. Grunwald, W. Huang, K. Ivors, R. W. Jones, S. Kamoun, K. Krampis, K. Lamour, M. –K. Lee, W. H. McDonald, M. Medina, H. J. G. Meijer, E. K. Nordberg, D. J. Maclean, M. D. Ospina-Giraldo, P. Morris, V. Phuntumart, N. Putnam, S. Rash, J. K. C. Rose, Y. Sakihama, A. Salamov, A. Savidor, C. F. Scheuring, B. M. Smith, B. W. S. Sobral, A. Terry, T. A. Torto-Alalibo, J. Win, Z. Xu, H. Zhang, I. Grigoriev, D. Rokhsar and J. L. Boore, 2006 Phytophthora genome sequences uncover evolutionary origins and mechanisms of pathogenesis. Science 313: 1261-1266.

Abstract from the manuscript:

Draft genome sequences have been determined for the soybean pathogen Phytophthora sojae and the sudden oak death pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. Oomycetes such as these Phytophthora species share the kingdom Stramenopila with photosynthetic algae such as diatoms, and the presence of many Phytophthora genes of probable phototroph origin supports a photosynthetic ancestry for the stramenopiles. Comparison of the two species’ genomes reveals a rapid expansion and diversification of many protein families associated with plant infection such as hydrolases, ABC transporters, protein toxins, proteinase inhibitors, and, in particular, a superfamily of 700 proteins with similarity to known oo¨ mycete avirulence genes.

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