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Figure 1 | BMC Plant Biology

Figure 1

From: A fungal endophyte induces transcription of genes encoding a redundant fungicide pathway in its host plant

Figure 1

Tree to tree variation in plant Taxol concentration correlates with the quantity of its resident Paraconiothyrium SSM001 fungal endophyte. For ecological sampling, single ~5-6 cm stem pieces from a diversity of Taxus trees were harvested and cut into small pieces. The majority of the subsamples were pooled for DNA extraction or Taxol quantification, and the remainder were used for isolation of endophytic fungus. (A) tRFLP DNA fingerprinting of the fungal endophyte community in the stem sample of each Taxus species were used for fungal 18S rDNA primer-based amplification and restriction. Cultured Taxol-producing fungus, Paraconiothyrium SSM001, was used as the positive control. Nucleotide sizes on the x-axis identify unique fungal isolates. The y-axis indicates the quantity of the fungal isolate. (B) Corresponding correlation between plant Taxol yield from the wood samples taken from different Taxus species and the Paraconiothyrium endophyte quantity in planta. Identification and quantification of Paraconiothyrium endophyte were performed using tRFLP, a PCR-based technique which amplifies the entire fungal community using DNA collected from pooled plant tissue; amplicons are restriction digested, and the fragment size (x-axis, panel a) indicates the fungal strain; simultaneously, the size of the peak (y-axis, panel a) indicates the amount of fungus. For all experiments, a single 5–10 cm stem piece was harvested from each tree, which was divided into small sections of which ~8-10 were pooled for Taxol quantification and/or fungal DNA fingerprinting.

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