Research
The majority of plant diseases are caused by fungi and, in
spite of chemical fungicides in pest management, these fungi
still are responsible for extensive economical
losses. Chemical fungicides can have drastic effects on the
environment and the consumer, and a reduction of their
application in agriculture is therefore desirable.
Trichoderma
atroviride is a filamentous cosmopolitan fungus,
commonly found in soil, and isolated from both tropic as well
as temperate climates. It is best known for its biocontrol
capabilities against a range of phytopathogenic fungi
including Rhizoctonia solani and Botrytis
cinerea, which are pests of hundreds of plant crops,
including tomatoes, beans, cucumber, strawberries, cotton and
grapes.
Although more than 50 different Trichoderma-based agricultural products are registered, the knowledge of the underlying intracellular mechanisms and the involved genes which enable the fungus to antagonize phytopathogenic fungi is still very limited. During the mycoparasitic interaction, the host fungus is recognized and attacked, followed by nutrient utilisation by the mycoparasite, killing the host before or just after invasion. Investigations on the underlying signal transduction pathways revealed that G-protein signalling and pathways involving MAP-kinases play important roles in the recognition of host-derived signals and in the activation of the mycoparasitic response in T. atroviride
The aim of the project is to identify mycoparasitism-relevant agents specifically induced by a living host fungus by combining genome-wide expression profiling and proteomic approaches. By including signaling mutants with altered mycoparasitic features as tools, information about key molecular processes participating in mycoparasitism will be obtained.
We collaborate with Drs Susanne Zeilinger and Martina
Marchetti at the
Technical University of
Vienna. Dr Zeilinger is the expert on
Trichoderma and leads the project. Dr Marchetti is
responsible for the study of protein expression and
phosphorylation, while our group contributes microarray
design, transcription level expression profiling, and data
analysis.
Support for this project was won through competition in the
WWTF Life Sciences Call 2009.