The smut fungus Thecaphora thlaspeos colonizes the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana
K. COURVILLE (1), L. Frantzeskakis (1), K. Bösch (1), R. Kellner (2), M. Feldbrügge (1), V. Göhre (1) (1) University of Düsseldorf, Germany; (2) Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding, Germany

Smut fungi are a prevalent group of biotrophic plant-pathogens that affect economically important cereal crops. Having the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana as a host for smut infection would be ideal to study the underlying plant responses since its immune system is well-understood and access to a multitude of mutants allows for genetic analysis. In order to employ this advantageous system, we are currently establishing a smut infection system in model plants. Here we report the smut fungus Thecaphora thlaspeos and its Brassicaceae hosts as a novel pathosystem to study the molecular interactions of infection of smut pathogens and model plants. Interestingly, there are no visible symptoms of infection except for the presence of spores within the siliques. Due to entry and growth phenotypes in its non-grass hosts, we hypothesize that the fungus utilizes unique molecular mechanisms in order to infect. Interestingly, the T. thlaspeos genome contains predicted effectors that are known to act against dicot hosts and they are clearly induced during infection. As T. thlaspeos is able to colonize the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, we have a pathosystem with two genetically tractable partners to study smut infection mechanisms and plant responses. In the future, this will not allow us to understand how the effector repertoires of plant-pathogenic fungi have evolved to allow for the infection of new host plants but also how they evade detection by the plant immune system.

Abstract Number: P9-248
Session Type: Poster