Judith K Brown
Work Summary
Unravel the phylodynamics and transmission-specific determinants of emerging plant virus/fastidious bacteria-insect vector complexes, and translate new knowledge to abate pathogen spread in food systems.
Unravel the phylodynamics and transmission-specific determinants of emerging plant virus/fastidious bacteria-insect vector complexes, and translate new knowledge to abate pathogen spread in food systems.
Sattar, M.N., Koutou, M., Hosseini, S., Leke, W., Brown, J.K., and Kvarnheden, A. 2015. First report of begomoviruses infecting tomato with leaf curl disease in Burkina Faso. Plant Dis. 99: 732.
PMID: 18944562;Abstract:
Phylogenetic and distance analyses place Chino del tomate virus (CdTV) in the New World clade of begomoviruses and indicate that CdTV and Tomato leaf crumple virus (TLCrV) are closely related strains of the same virus. One cloned CdTV A component (pCdTV-H6), when inoculated to tomato with the B component (pCdTV-B52), produced mild symptoms and low DNA titers. Another cloned CdTV A component (pCdTV-H8), when coinoculated to tomato with the B component, produced moderate leaf curling and veinal chlorosis similar to that of TLCrV. Coinoculation of both CdTV A components and the B component to tomato produced wild-type chino del tomate (CdT) disease symptoms consisting of severe leaf curling, veinal and interveinal chlorosis, and stunting. The two CdTV A components were nearly identical, except at nucleotide positions 1,722 and 2,324. The polymorphism at nucleotide 1,722 resulted in a change at Rep amino acid 261. The second polymorphism at nucleotide 2,324 resulted in changes at Rep amino acid 60 and AC4 amino acid 10. Two chimeric A components constructed by reciprocal exchange of a fragment bearing the polymorphic site at nucleotide 1,722 were evaluated for symptom phenotype. One chimeric A component (pCdTV-H86) produced wild-type CdT symptoms when coinoculated to tomato with the B component. The reciprocal chimeric A component (pCdTV-H68), when coinoculated to tomato with the B component, also produced severe leaf curling, veinal chlorosis, and stunting. However, pCdTV-H68 induced less obvious interveinal chlorosis than wild-type or pCdTV-H86. Examination of A component genotypes recovered from tomato coinoculated with pCdTV-H6 and pCdTV-H8 indicated that recombination occurred to produce a genotype identical to pCdTV-H86. These results indicate that subtle genotypic variation has significant effects on symptom expression and may explain phenotypic differences observed among isolates and cloned DNAs of CdTV and TLCrV.
Abstract:
Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) adults were collected from poinsettia plants (Euphorbia pulcherrima) in retail nurseries in Cd. Obregon and Navojoa, Sonora, Mexico. A single field sample was collected from broccoli plants in Obregon, Sonora. Both adult whitefly and immature instars were observed on infested leaves. Whiteflies were identified as B. tabaci using morphological characters of the pupae to distinguish them from the greenhouse whitefly; and to specific biotype, by molecular analysis using the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (mtCOI) sequence. Phylogenetic analysis of mtCOI sequences indicated that poinsettias were colonized both by the Q and the B biotype. The Q biotype was found only on poinsettia plants, and one poinsettia sample was infested with both the Q and the B biotype. The B biotype alone was associated with the field-collected broccoli sample analyzed in the study. A more extensive survey is required to determine the extent of the distribution of the Q biotype in Mexico, particularly where ornamental plants are transported from central to northern Mexico. Such plants could serve as the source of the Q biotype, which has been reported to be highly resistant to insecticides including the neo-nicotinoids that are widely used to control the B biotype in much of Mexico. This is the first report of the Q biotype in Mexico.
PMID: 12695565;PMCID: PMC154288;Abstract:
Evolution of resistance by pests is the main threat to long-term insect control by transgenic crops that produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins. Because inheritance of resistance to the Bt toxins in transgenic crops is typically recessive, DNA-based screening for resistance alleles in heterozygotes is potentially much more efficient than detection of resistant homozygotes with bioassays. Such screening, however, requires knowledge of the resistance alleles in field populations of pests that are associated with survival on Bt crops. Here we report that field populations of pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella), a major cotton pest, harbored three mutant alleles of a cadherin-encoding gene linked with resistance to Bt toxin Cry1Ac and survival on transgenic Bt cotton. Each of the three resistance alleles has a deletion expected to eliminate at least eight amino acids upstream of the putative toxin-binding region of the cadherin protein. Larvae with two resistance alleles in any combination were resistant, whereas those with one or none were susceptible to Cry1Ac. Together with previous evidence, the results reported here identify the cadherin gene as a leading target for DNA-based screening of resistance to Bt crops in lepidopteran pests.