Transcriptomic comparison of Botrytis cinerea wild type and VELVET mutants

An RNAseq-based transcriptomic comparison of Botrytis cinerea wild type and the three VELVET mutants was performed, to correlate common virulence defects of the mutants with changes in gene expression. A large number of genes encoding infection-related and secreted proteins was strongly underexpressed in the mutants, in particular genes encoding proteases and carbohydrate active enzymes. Many VELVET-regulated genes were found to be upregulated in the wild type during host plant infection (Müller et al.: Investigations on VELVET regulatory mutants confirm the role of host tissue acidification and secretion of proteins in pathogenesis of Botrytis cinerea; New Phytologist, 2018) RNA was obtained from tomato leaves 24-28 h.p.i. with B. cinerea wild type B05.10 (3 repl.), and the VELVET mutants vel1* (4 repl.), lae1 (3 repl.s) and vel1 (3 replicates). For transcriptome comparison of in vitro and in planta growth, RNA was also isolated from liquid culture (32 h.p.i.).