• The Korean Journal of Mycology
• /
• v.25 no.3 s.82
• /
• pp.191-201
• /
• 1997

A mutant (HSMl) of Cryphonectria parasitica created during transformation reproduced the hypovirulent symptoms in virus-free wild type. Its phenomena have been proved with morphological marker such as reduced sporulation, pigmentation, and laccase production. In addition to the changes in phenotypic characteristics, down-regulations of Lac1, Crp1, Vir1 and Vir2 were also observed. The integration of transforming vector was confirmed and located within genome by marker rescuing. Vector integration occurred between two genes, Cpg2 and Cpg3, which resulted in the disruption of neither Cpg2 nor Cpg3. Both Cpg2 and Cpg3 genes, sized at 1.8 kb and 1.9 kb respectively, were rarely transcribed genes in Cryphonectria parasitica. Cpg2 expression was significantly overexpressed from 4 to 5 day old culture of both UEP1 and HSM1 while no differences were observed in Cpg3 expression. It appears that an aberration from the normal expression of Cpg2, not Cpg3, results in the hypovirulent symptoms in virus-free wild type.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.343-349
• /
• 1994

One hundred and two virulent(V) strains of Cryphonectria parasitica were isolated from the cankers of American chestnut (Castanea dentata) trees in western Massachusetts, USA. The diversity of vegetative compatibility groups (VCGs) of C. parasitica was investigated. One hundred and two strains represented 54 VCGs; 38 VCGs had only one strain each, 6 VCGs had 2 strains each, and 10 most common VCGs had 52 strains. Great diversity in VCGs may due to the increasing numbers of VCGs with time since the pathogen has been in Massachusetts for 80 years. Ten vegetative compatibility representative strains were selected from the 10 most common VCGs and converted to hypovirulent (H) strains through the pairing and hyphal anastomosis of H strains (4 strains with French dsRNA elements and 17 strains with Italian dsRNA elements). All of the 10 representative strains were converted to H strains by at least more than one of the H strains.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.48 no.4
• /
• pp.222-225
• /
• 2005

Strains showing antifungal activity against Cryphonectria parasitica were isolated from coast soil of Taean , Korea. Of 152 strains isolated, 6 strains showed antifungal activity in vitro against C. parasitica. Ta24 strain showed highest activity with 1.6 cm clean inhibition zone. For strain identification, the morphological characteristic and 16S rDNA sequences were determined. Ta24 strain showed 99% homology with Streptomyces sampsonii and was identified as Streptomyces sp.

• Journal of Microbiology
• /
• v.44 no.5
• /
• pp.556-561
• /
• 2006

A differential display for the expression profiles of wild-type Cryphonectria parasitica and its virally-infected isogenic hypovirulent strain revealed several transcripts of interest, which evidenced significant matches with fungal genes of known function. Among which, we have further analyzed an amplified PCR product with significant sequence similarity to the known fungal stress-responsive thioredoxin gene from Neurospora crassa. The product of the cloned thioredoxin gene, CpTrx1, consists of 117 amino acids, with a predicted molecular mass of 13.0 kDa and a pI of 5.4. Sequence comparisons demonstrated that the deduced protein sequence of the CpTrx1 gene evidenced a high degree of homology to all known thioredoxins, with the highest degree of homology with trx1, a thioredoxin gene from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and evidenced a preservation of the conserved hall markresidues (Trp-Cys-Gly-Pro-Cys) at the active site of thioredoxin. The E. coli-generated CpTRX1 manifested thioredoxin activity, according to the insulin reduction assay, which indicates that the cloned gene does indeed encode for the C. parasitica thioredoxin.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.217-222
• /
• 2004

As Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which has long been used to transform plants, is known to transfer T-DNA to budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a variety of fungi were subjected to the A. tumefaciens-mediated transformation to improve their transformation frequency and feasibility. The A. tumefaciens-mediated transformation of chestnut blight fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, is performed in this study as the first example of transformation of a hardwood fungal pathogen. The transfer of the binary vector pBIN9-Hg, containing the bacterial hygromycin B phosphotransferase gene under the control of the Aspergillus nidulans trpC promoter and terminator, as a selectable marker, led to the selection of more than 1,000 stable, hygromycin B-resistant transformants per 1${\times}$10$\^$6/ conidia of C. parasitica. The putative transformants appeared to be mitotically stable. The transformation efficiency appears to depend on the bacterial strain, age of the bacteria cell culture and ratio of fungal spores to bacterial cells. PCR and Southern blot analysis indicated that the marker gene was inserted at different chromosomal sites. Moreover, three transformants out of ten showed more than two hybridizing bands, suggesting more than two copies of the inserted marker gene are not uncommon.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.50 no.3
• /
• pp.173-174
• /
• 2007

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.496-502
• /
• 2008

Cryparin, encoded as a single copy gene (Crp) of the chestnut blight fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, is the most abundant protein produced by this fungus. However, its accumulation is decreased remarkably in C. parastica strains containing the double-stranded (ds) RNA virus Cryphonectria hypovirus 1. To characterize the transcriptional regulatory element(s) for strong expression and viral regulation, promoter analysis was conducted. Serial deletion of the Crp promoter region resulted in a step-wise decrease in promoter activity, indicating a localized distribution of genetic elements in the cryparin promoter. Promoter analysis indicated two positive and a repressive cis-acting elements. Among them, the promoter region between nt -1,282 and -907 appeared to be necessary for hypoviral-mediated down-regulation. An electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) on the corresponding promoter region (-1,282/-907) indicated two regions at (-1,257/-1,158) and (-1,107/-1,008) with the characteristic AGGAGGA-N42-GAGAGGA and its inverted repeat TCCTCTC-N54-TCCTCCT, respectively, appeared to be specific binding sites for cellular factors.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.142-146
• /
• 2000

Ordered differential display using RT-PCR (ODD-PCR) was conducted to have a profile of the differently expressed genes between a hypovirulent strain of Cryphonectria parasitica (UEP1) and its isogenic wild type strain (EP155/2). ODD-PCR has advantages of high sensitivity, reproducibility, proportional representation, and limited number of primer combinations comparing with other differential display methods. RNAs were prepared from 1 and 5 day liquid culture of both hypovirulent and wild type strains, and were further evaluated with the marker genes of C. parasitica such as cryparin and mating factor MF2-1, which were already proven to be specifically down-regulated by the presence of mycovirus CHV1-713. ODD-PCR was conducted using those RNAs and expressed genes were categorized to five groups according to their temporal and quantitative expression patterns. Those fives groups are CPC, CPE, CPL, CPD, and CPU which represent constitutively-expressed, early-expressed, late-expressed, down-regulated, and up-regulated, respectively. Ninety two primer combinations out of a total of 192 have been tested so far. Among the twenty to fifty distinct bands per each reaction, an average of four to ten genes was identified as viral-regulated fungal genes. Those viral-specifc genes were further analyzed by DNA sequencing followed by homology search. Characterization of 30 clones including all five groups were conducted as a preliminary data and more are under investigation.

• 한국균학회소식:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2018.05a
• /
• pp.11-11
• /
• 2018

Cryphonectria parasitica, chestnut blight fungus, has a characteristic of decreasing pathogenicity when infected with Cryphonectria hypovirus 1. C. parasitica is known to be one of the most representative model systems used to observe the interaction between viruses, plants and fungi. The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, which is well conserved in various organisms ranging from yeast to humans, functions in relaying phosphorylation-dependent signals within MAPK cascades to diverse cellular functions involved in the regulation of pheromone, cell wall integrity, and osmotolerance in filamentous fungi. Several genes in the MAPK pathway were revealed to be regulated by hypovirus, or to be involved in pathogenicity in C. parasitica. Among these pathways, the CWI pathway has aroused interest because CpBck1, an ortholog of yeast Bck1 (a CWI MAPKKK), was previously reported to be involved in cell wall integrity and sectorization. Interestingly, sporadic sectorization was observed in the CpBck1 mutant and sectored phenotypes were stably inherited in the progeny that were successively transferred from sectored mycelia. In this study, we analyzed the biological function of CpSlt2, downstream gene of CpBck1, to confirm whether the sectorization phenomenon occurred in the specific single gene or cell wall integrity (CWI) pathway. As results, the CpSlt2-null mutant exhibited marked changes in colonial growth, near absence of conidiation and aerial hyphae, abnormal pigmentation, CWI-related phenotypic defects, and dramatically impaired virulence. As cultivation of the mutant strains progressed, the majority of the colonies showed sporadic sectorization and mycelia from the sectored area stably maintained the sectored phenotype. These results suggest that the unique sectorization is CWI pathway-specific, though the components in the same CWI pathway have common and specific functions.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
• /
• v.26 no.4 s.87
• /
• pp.450-457
• /
• 1998

The cryparin of Cryphonectria parasitica belongs to a cell wall associated fungal hydrophobin. The cryparin, though it is encoded by a single copy gene, is known for the high expression during the liquid culture of C. parasitica, and it turns out that 22% of total mRNA was transcribed for cryparin at 48hr after the liquid culture. In addition, it is also known as one of down-regulated fungal proteins by the presence of double stranded RNA virus, Cryphonectria hypovirus 1. In previous studies (Kim et al., 1999), we have constructed a cryparin-null mutant by replacing the cryparin gene with hygromycin B resistance gene due to site directed homologous recombination. In order for the promoter analysis of cryparin which seems to be very strong as well as mycoviral specific, it is preferable to have a strain with only a target promoter replaced and a discernable target site for incoming vectors. However, the cryparin-null mutant revealed the presence of an additional copy of transforming vector except the one which replaced the cryparin gene. In addition, the cryparin-null mutant did not contain any markers for targeted integration of incoming vectors. This prompts us to design an experiment to obtain a strain for promoter analysis of cryparin gene. A different mating type strain EP6(Mata, $met^-$) was mated with the cryparin-null mutant ${\triangle}$Crp194-7(MatA, Crp${\triangle}$::hph) to make the progenies with only a single replacement vector and $met^-$ characteristic remained. Nutritional assay as well as Southern blot analysis revealed that the progeny, ${\triangle}$Crp194-a6, was the methionine auxotroph with a single replacing vector in genome. Northern blot analysis and PAGE showed that there was no cryparin produced in this bred strain either.