Verticillium Comparative Genomics Project

Project Information

The Verticillium sequencing project is part of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT Fungal Genome Initiative. The goal was to release a 7X genome sequence coverage for Verticillium dahliae, strain VdLs.17 and 4X coverage for Verticillium alfalfae, strain VaMs.102. Dr. Steven J. Klosterman, USDA ARS, Salinas, CA provided the genomic DNA for the sequencing project.


The Broad produced whole genome shotgun sequence from plasmids and Fosmids. The resulting 7.5X assembly for V. dahliae and 4.3X assembly for V. alfalfae, along with automated genome annotation was made public in May 2008.
A paper describing the comparative genomics between Verticillium dahliae, strain VdLs.17 and Verticillium alfalfae, strain VaMs.102 was published in July, 2011.


What is Verticillium?

Verticillium is a genus of filamentous fungi (Phylum Ascomycota, Class Sordariomycetes) encompassing species that possess verticillate conidiophores on which asexually formed conidia are borne (Inderbitzin et al. 2011). No sexual stage is known for Verticillium species. Species of Verticillium cause plant diseases on over 200 plant species and can cause major economic losses in crop plants such as strawberry and cotton. Verticillium dahliae, the type species of the genus (Inderbitzin et al. 2011), can be isolated easily from dying and decaying plant material, infested soils, and is often seedborne. Among the Verticillium species, Verticillium dahliae is the most frequently isolated and described of the 10 plant-associated Verticillium species. Rather than producing long-lived microsclerotia like those of V. dahliae, V. alfalfae produces dark resting mycelia (Klosterman et al. 2011; Inderbitzin et al. 2011).


References

Inderbitzin P, Bostock RM, Davis RM, Usami T, Platt HW, Subbarao KV. 2011. Phylogenetics and taxonomy of the fungal vascular wilt pathogen Verticillium, with the descriptions of five new species. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28341.


Klosterman, S.J., Subbarao, K.V., Kang, S., Veronese, P., Gold, S.E. Thomma, B.P.H.J., Chen, Z., Henrissat, B., Lee, Y.-H., Park, J., Garcia-Pedrajas, M.D., Barbara, D.J., Anchieta, A., de Jonge, R., Santhanam, P. Maruthachalam, K., Atallah, Z., Amyotte, S.G., Paz, Z., Inderbitzin, P., Hayes, R.J., Heiman, D.I., Young, S. Zeng, Q., Engels, R., Galagan, J., Cuomo, C.A., Dobinson, K.F., Ma, L.-J. 2011. Comparative genomics yields insights into niche adaptation of plant vascular wilt pathogens. PLoS Pathogens, 7:e1002137.


Data access and citation

The genome assemblies and annotation of Verticillium dahliae and Verticillium alfalfae are available in Genbank and at the JGI Mycocosm site.

Genomic data can also be accessed by ftp via this link


For use of this data, please cite: Klosterman et al. 2011. Comparative genomics yields insights into niche adaptation of plant vascular wilt pathogens. PLoS Pathogens, 7:e1002137.


Verticillium comparative manuscript supplementary data files:

Supplementary data can be accessed via this link
Web File1 1:1 orthologous genes between V. dahliae and V. alfalfae.
Web File2 Annotation of Verticillium Cazymes
Web File3 Annotation of Verticillium secretome
Web File4 Annotation of V. dahliae lineage-specific regions
Web File5 Gene expression under -N and root extrude induced growth conditions.
Web File6 Blastp among Verticillum and Fusarium genomes