Genetic diversity of Monilinia spp. species within Laccase gene

Pome and stone fruit plants play important role in fruit production all over the world. The biggest damage to the Rosaceae family pome and stone fruit plants is caused by brown rot disease. Brown rot is caused by world wide spread Monilinia spp. pathogens: Monilinia laxa, M. polystroma, M. fructigena and M. fructicola. Monilinia laxa and M. fructigena are common in Europe, M. polystroma – in Japan, while Monilinia fructicola is indigenous in USA and Australia. Despite M. fructicola was identificated in several European countries this pathogen is in the list of quarantine pathogens in Europe, and still absent in Lithuania. Knowledge about the genetic diversity of Monilinia spp. is required for the management of this disease spread. The whole sequenced genomes of all four Monilinia spp. pathogens are available on National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GenBank database. Relationship between pathogens can be investigated according to polymorphism of certain genes. Laccase coding gene is important for Monilinia spp. fungal pathogens for biosynthesis and lignin degradation, pigment biosynthesis and morphogenesis. In NCBI GenBank database 1879 records for Monilinia spp. were found while only 2 records in NCBI Refseq data base. For the genetic diversity analysis of Monilinia spp. pathogens multiple sequence alignment (MSA) and phylogeny analysis were performed with 18 Monilinia spp. Oxidoreductase component Laccase (lcc2) gene sequences from NCBI GenBank using MEGA X software [1]. The results showed that quarantine pathogen M. fructicola is genetically most different from other Monilinia spp. Genetically closest pathogens are M. laxa and M. polystromaGamtos mokslų fakultetasLietuvos agrarinių ir miškų mokslų centro Sodininkystės ir daržininkystės institutasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta