The genome of the fungal pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death has been sequenced by US scientists.Brett Tyler, of the Virginia Bio-informatics Institute in Blacksburg, and Dan Rokhsar and colleagues at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, revealed the 65 million-long sequence of DNA base pairs that make up Phytophthora ramorum’s 15,000 genes at the JGI on Thursday. It is the first member of the Phytophthora family to be sequenced. The researchers hope that the map of P. ramorum’s genetic code will pinpoint genes and their proteins that will allow them to detect, track and treat the disease.The completion of the sequence coincides with heightened worries over the spread of the Sudden Oak Death in the US following the discovery in March that an infected California nursery had spread the disease nationwide through plant shipments. Plant pathologists now fear that the East coast Appalachian forests could be infected. The infection would not show up for at least a year."We are holding our breath right now,” says Everett Hansen, a plant pathologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. The disease has also been discovered in nurseries and some nature parks in the UK and the Netherlands.
