Sequence analysis of two genomic regions of Leptosphaeria maculans, the fungus that causes blackleg disease (phoma stem canker) of Brassica napus

Abstract

The dothideomycete fungus, Leptosphaeria maculans, is poorly described at the genomic level. Two genomic regions have been analysed - one (55 kb) comprises a cluster of 18 genes encoding the biosynthetic enymes for a phytotoxin, sirodesmin, whilst the other (184 kb) is the pericentromeric region of a 2.80 Megabase chromosome. Transcription of all genes in the sirodesmin gene cluster is co-regulated with the production of sirodesmin in culture. Disruption of one of these genes (encoding a two-module non-ribosomal peptide synthetase) is essential for production of sirodesmin. The 184 kb sequence contains 6.980 kb repetitive element named Pholy bordered by two Long Terminal Repeats (LTRs), five..