Bidirectional promoter trapping T-DNA for insertional mutagenesis in Verticillium dahliae

Transfer DNA (T-DNA)-based random insertional mutagenesis is a universal forward genetic approach for gene identification and cloning in many phytopathogenic fungi. In a large number of randomly selected transformants, screening for mutants with a specific phenotype is laborious, especially for pathogenicity-defective mutants. To accelerate mutant screening and gene identification, a bidirectional promoter-trapping Ti binary vector, 1300-bisGFP-hyg, was constructed and deployed in this study. More than 6000 Verticillium dahliae transformants were obtained by the mediation of Agrobacterium tumefaciens carrying the vector. One thousand randomly selected transformants were cultured on Czapek–Dox and on Czapek–Dox plus cotton root extract media plates. The cultured transformants with green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression or changes in phenotype were selected and used in virulence or promoter-trapping assays. Based on the virulence assay of 60 transformants, the pathogenicity of 17 of these mutants was compromised. Ten pathogenicity-defective mutants were found with GFP expression, and 6 with expression in Czapek–Dox plus cotton root extract media specifically. Using TAIL-PCR (thermal asymmetric interlaced polymerase chain reaction), the T-DNA insertion sites were identified in 8 GFP-expressing transformants, including 5 pathogenicity-defective mutants and 3 unaffected transformants. Promoters of 6 genes were successfully trapped using the T-DNA method in this study. The nonpathogenic transformant 24C9 was the subject of additional investigation. It displayed strong GFP expression on water agar medium supplemented with cotton root extracts and on cotton seedling stems. The results obtained by Southern blot and quantitative real-time PCR confirmed that the transcription level of VdUGPU (encoding UTP-glucose-1-phosphate uridylyltransferase) was significantly reduced owing to T-DNA insertion in the gene promoter region. These results indicate that the bidirectional promoter-trapping Ti vector, combined with induction medium that contains root exudates, can be useful for identification of pathogenicity-related and functional genes in V. dahliae.