Volume 9, Issue 6, Pages 939-942 (June 2016) Host-Induced Gene Silencing of the Target Gene in Fungal Cells Confers Effective Resistance to the Cotton Wilt Disease Pathogen Verticillium dahliae  Tao Zhang, Yun Jin, Jian-Hua Zhao, Feng Gao, Bang-Jun Zhou, Yuan-Yuan Fang, Hui-Shan Guo  Molecular Plant  Volume 9, Issue 6, Pages 939-942 (June 2016) DOI: 10.1016/j.molp.2016.02.008 Copyright © 2016 The Author Terms and Conditions

Figure 1 Transgenic Cotton Plants Producing Fungal Gene-Derived siRNAs Induce Silencing of the Target mRNA and Confer Resistance to V. dahliae Infection. (A) Morphologies of wild-type (WT) V. dahliae (V592 strain) and mutant knocked out for VdH1 (VdaΔvdh1). dpc, days post-culture. (B) Detection of VdH1-derived siRNAs (siVdH1) in 35S-VdH1i transgenic cotton lines by RNA gel blot analysis. The VdH1i-specific sequence was used as probe. Some numbers of transgenic cotton lines are indicated. (C) Disease symptoms of V592 infection on WT and 35S-VdH1i cotton plants. The photograph was taken at 20 days post-inoculation. (D) Disease grades (DG) of V592 infection on WT and 35S-VdH1i cotton plants. Calculation of DG is described in Supplemental Methods. Four is the highest DG when the whole plant dies and 0 is the lowest DG with no visible wilting. The asterisks indicate significant difference compared with WT (P < 0.05, one-way ANOVA). (E) Fungal recovery from infected cotton. Morphologies of representative colonies isolated from WT (VdaCotton) and different transgenic plants (Vda35S−Vdh1i) infected with V592. Photographs were taken at various time points as indicated. (F) Detection of VdH1 mRNA in recovered hyphae isolated from seven infected plants by RNA gel blot analysis. 32P-labeled VdH1 gene-specific and Garp1-specific DNA probes were used. Methylene blue-stained rRNAs are shown as loading controls. (G) Detection of siVdH1 in recovered hyphae as described in (F). The VdH1i-specific sequence was used as probe. U6 was used as a loading control. Molecular Plant 2016 9, 939-942DOI: (10.1016/j.molp.2016.02.008) Copyright © 2016 The Author Terms and Conditions