Epigenetics

During the first funding period we have shown that heterochromatin regulates Fusarium graminearum secondary metabolite production. In the second we plan to compare the transcriptomes and secondary metabolomes of the chromatin mutants with the PH-1 wild type strain. We will use two transcriptome methods, microarrays for sensitive detection of fungal-specific transcripts and RNA-seq for the determination of highly expressed transcripts in fungi as well as in the host. We will select fungal genes differentially expressed in the PH-1 and chromatin structure mutants for further characterization and their involvement in the pathogenicity process. We are interested in changes of selected heterochromatic and euchromatic marks in fungal cells during pathogenic growth and changes to chromatin states during saprophytic growth. We hypothesize that some host defense molecules change the chromatin code of the fungus during infection and would like to learn how the chromatin mutants circumvent this response and become more virulent.