An EST library from Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici reveals genes potentially involved in fungal differentiation.

The rust fungus Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici is an obligately biotrophic pathogen on wheat plants and thus difficult to investigate. Hence, little is known about this fungus at the molecular level. We constructed a differential suppression subtractive hybridization cDNA-library from rust-infected vs. healthy wheat plants. The majority of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) showed similarities to fungal sequences. Semiquantitative RT-PCR using mRNA from rust-infected leaves, and from axenically grown, differentiating and nondifferentiating young rust colonies as well as sporulating and nonsporulating mature mycelia revealed rather diverse expression patterns for different ESTs, shedding new light on their potential involvement in differentiation and host-pathogen interaction.