Trichoderma harzianum genes induced during growth on Rhizoctonia solani cell walls.

Trichoderma harzianum is a biocontrol agent that attacks a range of economically important phytopathogenic fungi. In an attempt to identify genes specifically expressed by T. harzianum during growth on cell walls of Rhizoctonia solani, we carried out differential screening of an induced cDNA library. In this paper we report the analysis of the sequence and expression of two cDNA clones that encode putative mycoparasitism-related proteins of T. harzianum. One of these clones corresponds to a gene, inda1, that encodes a protein of 570 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 62,853 Da. The predicted amino acid sequence of inda1 showed a high degree of similarity with amino acid permeases from several other organisms. The other cDNA clone corresponds to a gene, indc11, that encodes a novel protein of 340 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 37,010 Da. The use of this methodology should provide specific genetic markers to follow mycoparasitism by Trichoderma spp.