Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum 25433 Genome sequencing and assembly

Members of the F. oxysporum species complex exhibit extraordinary genetic plasticity and cause some of the most destructive and intractable diseases across a diverse spectrum of hosts, including many economically important crops such as banana, cotton, canola, melons, and tomato. The Fusarium Comparative Genomics Project (Ma et al, Nature 2010) highlighted the existence of lineage-specific chromosomes that are enriched for transposable elements and encode genes that are pathogenicity related. The comparative analysis provides evidence for the horizontal transfer (HT) of four chromosomes accounting for 25% of the genome in an asexual, pathogenic fungal species, Fusarium oxysporum. The direct contribution of the chromosomes to pathogenicity is indicated by the fact that they encode known virulence factors such as effector proteins, necrosis-inducing peptides and a large array of enzymes targeting plant substrates, but lack genes involved in primary metabolism. The objective of this project is to search for the presence of pathogenicity related chromosomes in other F. oxysporum isolates that cause disease in different plant hosts.

Fusarium oxysporum物种复合体的成员展现出非凡的遗传可塑性，并导致跨众多宿主谱系中一些最具破坏性和难以治疗的疾病，其中包括许多经济作物，如香蕉、棉花、油菜、瓜类和番茄。Fusarium比较基因组学项目（Ma等，自然2010年）突出了存在具有谱系特异性的染色体，这些染色体富含转座元件并编码与致病性相关的基因。比较分析提供了证据，表明在无性生殖、致病的真菌物种Fusarium oxysporum中，有四个染色体发生了水平转移（HT），占基因组25%。这些染色体直接对致病性的贡献体现在它们编码已知的毒力因子，如效应蛋白、坏死诱导肽以及一系列针对植物底物的酶，但缺乏参与初级代谢的基因。该项目的目标是寻找其他F. oxysporum分离株中存在与致病性相关的染色体的证据，这些分离株导致不同植物宿主发病。