The infection cushion: a fungal weapon for plant-biomass destruction

Full transcriptomes of the Botrytis cinerea wild-type strain B0510, cultured in liquid medium or on cellophane sheets placed on PDB 1/4-agar plates, were compared to identify genes differentially expressed when infection cushions are formed from vegetative mycelium. Botrytis cinerea conidia were spread onto cellophane sheets placed on PDB 1/4-agar plates and harvested after 44h of culture when infection cushions (IC) represented about 40% of the surface of the plates. Control samples corresponding to mycelium grown in liquid PDB 1/4 were harvested after 44h of culture. 4 and 3 replicates were performed for IC and mycelium, respectively. The 7 total-RNA samples were used for hybridization on Nimblegen 4plex gene expression arrays (20,885 gene models from Botrytis cinerea with three 60-mer probes per gene)