Recognition events in AM symbiosis: analysis of fungal gene expression at the early appressorium stage

Arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis is induced upon a series of recognition events involving the reorganization of both plant and fungal cellular programs culminating in the formation of appressoria on the epidermal root cells. In this work we monitored for the first time the genetic changes occurring in the fungal partner during early appressorium development. We established an in vitro system of Glomus mosseae and Petroselinum crispum for studying appressorium formation and found that after 120 h first appressoria developed in the root epidermis. We have constructed a fungal subtractive suppressive library enriched in genes up-regulated at this stage. Our aim was to identify early signaling events during plant recognition leading to appressoria formation. The library contains 375 clones with an average size of 500 bp. From these, 200 clones were sequenced and most of them represent gene fragments with no known homologues (63