Gary D Foster

University of Bristol | UB · School of Biological Sciences

Pleuromutilin is an antibiotic diterpenoid made by Clitopilus passeckerianus and related fungi, and it is the progenitor of a growing class of semi-synthetic antibiotics used in veterinary and human medicine. To harness the biotechnological potential of this natural product class, a full understanding of its biosynthetic pathway is essential. Previ...

Cassava is an important staple food in Africa and a major source of carbohydrates for 800 million people globally. However, cassava suffers severe yield losses caused by many factors including pests and diseases. A devastating disease of cassava is cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) caused by the cassava brown streak ipomoviruses (CBSIs) (family P...

Pleuromutilin is an antibiotic diterpenoid made by Clitopilus passeckerianus and related fungi, and it is the progenitor of a growing class of semi-synthetic antibiotics used in veterinary and human medicine. To harness the biotechnological potential of this natural product class, a full understanding of its biosynthetic pathway is essential. Previ...

Armillaria mellea is an important fungal pathogen worldwide, affecting a large number of hosts in the horticulture and forestry industries. Controlling A. mellea infection is expensive, labour intensive and time-consuming, so a new, environmentally friendly management solution is required. To this effect, endophytic Trichoderma species were studied...

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) is currently one of the major constraints on cassava production in Africa. CBSD is estimated to cause annual economic losses of over $100 million USD. CBSD is caused by at least two viral species: Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) and the Uganda cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV). In field, CBSV and UCBSV occur i...

Natural products with novel chemistry are urgently needed to battle the continued increase in microbial drug resistance. Mushroom-forming fungi are underutilized as a source of novel antibiotics in the literature due to their challenging culture preparation and genetic intractability. However, modern fungal molecular and synthetic biology tools hav...

Interrogation of an EST database for Clitopilus passeckerianus identified a putative homolog to the unusual stress response gene from yeast; ddr48, as being upregulated under pleuromutilin production conditions. Silencing of this gene, named cprp, produced a population of transformants which demonstrated significantly reduced pleuromutilin producti...

Plant viruses typically have highly condensed genomes, yet the plant-pathogenic viruses Cassava brown streak virus, Ugandan cassava brown streak virus, and Euphorbia ringspot virus are unusual in encoding an enzyme not yet found in any other virus, the "house-cleaning" enzyme inosine triphosphatase. Inosine triphosphatases (ITPases) are highly cons...

Aims: To isolate endophytic Trichoderma species and investigate the potential for biological control of the root rot pathogen Armillaria mellea. Methods and results: In all, 40 Trichoderma isolates were obtained from a range of host plants and identities were confirmed by ITS, rpb2 and tef1 sequence. When tested in dual culture assays for antago...

Corynespora cassiicola is a cosmopolitan fungus with a broad host range. One of the hosts often severely impacted is the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis on which it causes devastating leaf defoliation. To date, control of the disease is mainly focused on the application of fungicides, but this only provides short-term solution. Functional genomics...

There is a desperate need in continuing the search for natural products with novel mechanism to battle the constant increase of microbial drug resistance. Previously mushroom forming fungi were neglected as a source of novel antibiotics, due to the difficulties associated with their culture preparation and genetic tractability. However, modern fung...

Basidiomycete fungi are a rich source of natural products with a diverse array of potentially exploitable bioactivities. Two dimeric sesquiterpenes, bovistol B (1) and D (2), and one monomeric sesquiterpene, strossmayerin (7), were isolated from the culture filtrate of the basidiomycete fungus Coprinopsis strossmayeri. The structures were determine...

With an estimated 450 gigatons of carbon (Gt C), plants represent by far the most important kingdom of life on Earth, followed by bacteria (70 Gt C), whereas animals contribute only 2 Gt C to the approximately 550 Gt C of total life biomass [1]. In the light of such data, plant science appears to be drastically underappreciated by the public, by po...

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) is a leading cause of cassava yield losses across eastern and central Africa and is having a severe impact on food security across the region. Despite its importance, relatively little is known about the mechanisms behind CBSD viral infections. We have recently reported the construction of Cassava brown streak vi...

Naematolin is a biologically active sesquiterpene produced by Hypholoma species. Low titres and complex structure constrain the exploitation of this secondary metabolite. Here, we de novo sequenced the H. fasciculare genome to identify a candidate biosynthetic gene cluster for production of naematolin. Using Aspergillus oryzae as a heterologous hos...

The ascomycete fungus Zymoseptoria tritici is the causal agent of Septoria Tritici Blotch (STB), a major disease of wheat across Europe. Current understanding of the genetic components and the environmental cues which influence development and pathogenicity of this fungus is limited. The velvet B gene, velB, has conserved roles in development, seco...

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) is a leading cause of cassava losses in East and Central Africa, and is currently having a severe impact on food security. The disease is caused by two viruses within the Potyviridae family: Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) and Ugandan cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV), which both encode atypical Ham1 proteins...

The fungus Lecanicillium fungicola causes dry bubble disease in the white button mushroom Agaricus bisporus . Control strategies are limited, as both the host and pathogen are fungi, and there is limited understanding of the interactions in this pathosystem. Here, we present the genome sequence of Lecanicillium fungicola strain 150-1.

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) has major impacts on yield and quality of the tuberous roots of cassava in Eastern and Central Arica. At least two Potyviridae species cause the disease: Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) and Ugandan cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV). Cloned viral genome sequences known as infectious clones (ICs) have been impor...

Zymoseptoria tritici is the causal agent of septoria tritici blotch, a devastating fungal disease of wheat which can cause up to 40% yield loss. One of the ways in which Z. tritici spreads in the field is via rain splash-dispersed asexual pycnidiospores, however there is currently limited understanding of the genetic mechanisms governing the develo...

Plant virus infectious clones are important tools with wide ranging applications in different areas of biology and medicine. Their uses in plant pathology include the study of plant-virus interactions, and screening of germplasm as part of pre-breeding programmes for virus resistance. They can also be modified to induce transient plant gene silenci...

The rise in antibiotic resistance is a major threat for human health. Basidiomycete fungi represent an untapped source of underexploited antimicrobials, with pleuromutilin—a diterpene produced by Clitopilus passeckerianus—being the only antibiotic from these fungi leading to commercial derivatives. Here we report genetic characterisation of the ste...

The implementation of Agrobacterium tumefaciens as a transformation tool revolutionized approaches to discover and understand gene functions in a large number of fungal species. A. tumefaciens mediated transformation (AtMT) is one of the most transformative technologies for research on fungi developed in the last 20 years, a development arguably on...

Cassava is the second most important staple food crop in terms of per capita calories consumed in Africa and holds potential for climate change adaptation. Unfortunately, productivity in East and Central Africa is severely constrained by two viral diseases: cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and cassava brown streak disease (CBSD). CBSD was first reporte...

The basidiomycete fungi Hypholoma fasciculare and H. sublateritium are both prolific producers of sesquiterpenes and triterpenes, some of which have relevant pharmaceutical properties. Although H. sublateritium has been transformed in the past, the low reported efficiencies highlighted the need for establishing an effective simple transformation sy...

Clitopilus passeckerianus is the fungal species responsible for the production of pleuromutilin, a diterpene antibiotic that is gaining in commercial interest. Production of the antibiotic is constrained by the low titers typically obtained from isolates. We therefore set out to investigate the possibility of using classical breeding techniques cou...

Genetically modified (GM) crops have now been under commercial production for over 20 years. They are grown on around 180 million hectares of land in 28 countries worldwide, and cultivation is dominated by four crops: maize, soya bean, cotton and canola. First‐generation herbicide‐tolerant and insect‐resistant GM crops have many quantifiable benefi...

Coprinopsis strossmayeri is a coprinoid mushroom favoring the habitat of herbivore dung. As a result of this highly competitive environment, C. strossmayeri is anticipated to produce a wide array of antimicrobial secondary metabolites (SMs) of potential pharmaceutical importance. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of C. strossmayeri .

The way in which light is polarized when reflected from leaves can be affected by infection with plant viruses. This has the potential to influence viral transmission by insect vectors due to altered visual attractiveness of infected plants. The optical and topological properties of cuticular waxes and trichomes are important determinants of how li...

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The name honey fungus is enough to strike fear in many a gardener. Known scientifically as Armillaria, honey fungus is one of the most dreaded pathogens of agriculturists and horticulturists alike and has topped the RHS Advisory Service pathogen enquiry list consistently for the past 20 years. Common in gardens and woodlands throughout the UK, hone...

Armillaria (honey fungus) is a virulent necrotrophic pathogen that causes Armillaria root disease. Conventional Armillaria inoculation assays use young saplings as hosts and consequently are cumbersome, frequently conducted outdoors, and take many years from establishment to analysis of infection. We have developed and evaluated a faster inoculatio...

Filamentous fungi represent an incredibly rich and rather overlooked reservoir of natural products, which often show potent bioactivity and find applications in different fields. Increasing the naturally low yields of bioactive metabolites within their host producers can be problematic, and yield improvement is further hampered by such fungi often...

Fig. S1. Construction of Spr1 silencing cassettes. A. Spr1 cDNA was cloned into the Basidiomycete Molecular Toolkit (Burns et al., 2006) generating plasmids p004sense, p004stop and p004 anti‐sense. B. To introduce restriction sites, these plasmids were then cloned into a polylinker plasmid (pSL1180, Invitrogen) generating the Spr1 plasmids pSL004se...

Table S1. Serine protease protein IDs and accession numbers.

Table S2. Sequence of primers used in the construction of molecular constructs, PCR analysis of transformants and other analysis. Incorporated restriction enzyme sites are underlined.

Fig. S2. Proteinase clearing zone assays on milk or gelatin‐amended agar of non‐transformed control strain A15 (WT), GFP transformed Agaricus bisporus and hygromycin resistant sense (S), antisense (AS) and stop (ST) transformants. Colony and clearing zone diameters were measured 17 days after inoculation. (A) Control wild‐type A15 and GFP transform...

Fungi are often inconspicuous in nature and this means it is all too easy to overlook their importance. Often referred to as the “Forgotten Kingdom”, fungi are key components of life on this planet. The phylum Basidiomycota, considered to contain the most complex and evolutionarily advanced members of this Kingdom, includes some of the most iconic...

Stomata are important regulators of carbon dioxide uptake and transpirational water loss. They also represent points of vulnerability as bacterial and fungal pathogens utilise this natural opening as an entry portal, and thus have an increasingly complex relationship. Unlike the situation with bacterial and fungal pathogens, we know very little abo...

Armillaria mellea is a significant pathogen that causes Armillaria root disease on numerous hosts in forests, gardens and agricultural environments worldwide. Using a yeast-adapted pCAMBIA0380 Agrobacterium vector, we have constructed a series of vectors for transformation of A. mellea, assembled using yeast-based recombination methods. These have...

Semi-synthetic derivatives of the tricyclic diterpene antibiotic pleuromutilin from the basidiomycete Clitopilus passeckerianus are important in combatting bacterial infections in human and veterinary medicine. These compounds belong to the only new class of antibiotics for human applications, with novel mode of action and lack of cross-resistance,...

Alteration of leaf surface phenotypes due to virus infection has the potential to affect the likelihood of colonisation by insect vectors, or to affect their feeding activities. The aim of this study was to investigate whether viruses that rely on insects for their transmission, and which can be sensitive to the polarization of light, affect the pe...

Agaricus bisporus is a secondary decomposer fungus and an excellent model for the adaptation, persistence and growth of fungi in humic-rich environments such as soils of temperate woodland and pastures. The A. bisporus serine proteinase SPR1 is induced by humic acids and is highly expressed during growth on compost. Three Spr1 gene silencing casset...

Armillaria mellea is a serious pathogen of horticultural and agricultural systems in Europe and North America. The lack of a reliable in vitro fruiting system for heterothallic A. mellea has hindered research and required dependence on intermittently available wild-collected basidiospores of endemic genotypes, necessitating the use of variable gene...

Pepino mosaic virus (PepMV) poses a worldwide threat to the tomato industry. Considerable differences at the genetic level allow for the distinction of four main genotypic clusters; however, the basis of the phenotypic outcome is difficult to elucidate. This work reports the generation of wild-type PepMV infectious clones of both EU (mild) and CH2...

The potato Rx gene provides resistance against Pepino mosaic virus (PepMV) in tomato; however, recent work has suggested that the resistance conferred may not be durable. Resistance breaking can probably be attributed to multiple mutations observed to accumulate in the capsid protein (CP) region of resistance-breaking isolates, but this has not bee...

Abstract—Botrytis cinerea, the fungus causing gray mould disease, is usually controlled by cultural and chemical methods. It would be interesting to see if mycoviruses were a feasible method for reducing fungal virulence thus controlling the disease, but first more has to be understood of the RNA silencing mechanism and whether mycoviruses can comb...

Agaricus bisporus is susceptible to a number of diseases, particularly those caused by fungi, with Lecanicillium fungicola being the most serious. Control of this disease is important for the security of crop production, however given the lack of knowledge about fungal–fungal interactions, such disease control is rather limited. Exploiting the rece...

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Correction for “Genome sequence of the button mushroom Agaricus bisporus reveals mechanisms governing adaptation to a humic-rich ecological niche,” by Emmanuelle Morin, Annegret Kohler, Adam R. Baker, Marie Foulongne-Oriol, Vincent Lombard, Laszlo G. Nagy, Robin A. Ohm, Aleksandrina Patyshakuliyeva, Annick Brun, Andrea L. Aer...

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Correction for “Genome sequence of the button mushroom Agaricus bisporus reveals mechanisms governing adaptation to a humic-rich ecological niche,” by Emmanuelle Morin, Annegret Kohler, Adam R. Baker, Marie Foulongne-Oriol, Vincent Lombard, Laszlo G. Nagy, Robin A. Ohm, Aleksandrina Patyshakuliyeva, Annick Brun, Andrea L. Aer...

Agaricus bisporus is the model fungus for the adaptation, persistence, and growth in the humic-rich leaf-litter environment. Aside from its ecological role, A. bisporus has been an important component of the human diet for over 200 y and worldwide cultivation of the "button mushroom" forms a multibillion dollar industry. We present two A. bisporus...

Many plant bacteriologists, if not all, feel that their particular microbe should appear in any list of the most important bacterial plant pathogens. However, to our knowledge, no such list exists. The aim of this review was to survey all bacterial pathologists with an association with the journal Molecular Plant Pathology and ask them to nominate...

The aim of this review was to survey all fungal pathologists with an association with the journal Molecular Plant Pathology and ask them to nominate which fungal pathogens they would place in a 'Top 10' based on scientific/economic importance. The survey generated 495 votes from the international community, and resulted in the generation of a Top 1...

The aim of this review was to survey all fungal pathologists with an association with the journal Molecular Plant Pathology and ask them to nominate which fungal pathogens they would place in a 'Top 10' based on scientific/economic importance. The survey generated 495 votes from the international community, and resulted in the generation of a Top 1...

Many scientists, if not all, feel that their particular plant virus should appear in any list of the most important plant viruses. However, to our knowledge, no such list exists. The aim of this review was to survey all plant virologists with an association with Molecular Plant Pathology and ask them to nominate which plant viruses they would place...

Clitocypin and macrocypin are cysteine protease inhibitors of the mycocypin family which is unique to basidiomycetes. We have established that Clitocybe nebularis and Macrolepiota procera each contain genes for both macrocypin and clitocypin. Both are expressed in M. procera but only clitocypin in C. nebularis. Further analysis of mycocypin express...

Differences in the early responses of two potato cultivars, Igor and Nadine, to two isolates of Potato virus Y (PVY), the aggressive PVYNTN and the mild PVYN, were monitored. Microarray and quantitative real-time PCR analyses were carried out to identify differentially expressed genes after inoculation with each virus isolate. Additionally, symptom...

Agrobacterium tumefaciens has long been known to transform plant tissue in nature as part of its infection process. This natural mechanism has been utilised over the last few decades in laboratories world wide to genetically manipulate many species of plants. More recently this technology has been successfully applied to non-plant organisms in the...

Armillaria root disease is one of the most damaging timber and fruit tree diseases in the world. Despite its economic importance, many basic questions about the biology of the causal fungi, Armillaria spp., are unanswered. For example, Armillaria undergoes matings between diploid and haploid mycelia, which can result in a recombinant diploid withou...

For several years, researchers working on the plant pathogen Botrytis cinerea and a number of other related fungi have routinely used the pLOB1 vector system, based on hygromycin resistance, under the control of the Aspergillus nidulans oliC promoter and what was reported to be the beta-tubulin (tubA) terminator. Recently, it has been demonstrated...

This paper describes the optimisation of an existing basidiomycete molecular toolkit through the development of new versatile vectors. These vectors enable the straightforward and rapid construction of gene expression and silencing cassettes by allowing the easy exchange of promoters, coding regions and terminator elements. The constructs contain m...

In plant-pathogenic fungi, the pmk1 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling pathway plays an essential role in regulating the development of penetration structures and the sensing of host-derived cues, but its role in other pathosystems such as fungal-fungal interactions is less clear. We report the use of a gene disruption strategy to i...

We report the successful Agrobacterium tumefaciensmediated transformation of the important plant pathogen Verticillium albo-atrum. V. albo-atrum was demonstrated to be hygromycin B sensitive and consequently transformations were based on integration of either the hygromycin B resistance gene (hph) or hph in addition to the fluorescence gene DsRed....

We describe efficient polyethylene glycol (PEG)-mediated and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation systems for a pharmaceutically important basidiomycete fungus, Clitopilus passeckerianus, which produces pleuromutilin, a diterpene antibiotic. Three dominant selectable marker systems based on hygromycin, phleomycin, and carboxin selection were used...

Dominant selectable markers are beneficial for transformation of many fungi, particularly those model species where repeated transformations may be required. A carboxin resistance allele of the Coprinopsis cinerea sdi1 gene, encoding the iron-sulphur protein subunit of succinate dehydrogenase, was developed by introducing a suitable point mutation...

Pleuromutilin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that has been used in veterinary medicine for over 20 years, but is now gaining interest as a human therapeutic. The compound is a fungal secondary metabolite, but there is some degree of confusion within the literature concerning which species may produce pleuromutilin, with several differently named fu...

Functional gene studies in the cultivated white button mushroom Agaricus bisporus have been constrained by the absence of effective gene-silencing tools. Using two endogenous genes from A. bisporus, we have tested the utility of dsRNA hairpin constructs to mediate downregulation of specific genes. Hairpin constructs for genes encoding orotidine 5'-...

The Agaricus bisporus serine proteinase 1 (SPR1) appears to be significant in both mycelial nutrition and senescence of the fruiting body. We report on the construction of an SPR promoter::green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusion cassette, pGreen_hph1_SPR_GFP, for the investigation of temporal and developmental expression of SPR1 in homobasidiomycete...

Gene silencing is a powerful tool utilized for identification of gene function and analysis in plants, animals, and fungi. Here, we report the silencing of superoxide dismutase (bcsod1) in Botrytis cinerea through sense and antisense-mediated silencing mechanisms. Because superoxide dismutase (SOD) is a virulence factor, transformants were tested f...

The interaction between Agaricus bisporus and Verticillium fungicola may be the most economically significant interaction between two fungi. Work described in this chapter covers diverse aspects of the biology and molecular interaction of the host and pathogen and has established a robust baseline for future study of a pathogenic system involving t...

Gene silencing in fungi is often induced by dsRNA hairpin forming constructs the preparation of which can require multiple cloning steps. To simplify gene silencing in the filamentous fungi we have evaluated a high throughput cloning method for target sequences using the homobasidiomycete Coprinopsis cinerea, the GFP reporter and a commercially ava...

Potato virus Y (PVY) has a worldwide distribution and infects several economically important crops from the Solanaceae family. The emergence and spread of the PVYNTN strain, which is the causative agent of potato tuber necrotic ringspot disease (PTNRD), has lead to large economic losses and highlighted the need for accurate discrimination of the di...

This paper outlines the construction of a novel vector system comprising interchangeable terminators, as well as a multiple cloning site (MCS), to facilitate the transformation of the fungal plant pathogen Botrytis cinerea. Previous molecular studies on B. cinerea have relied upon the pLOB1 based vector system (controlled by the Aspergillus nidulan...

Since their conception in the late 1990s, microarray techniques have become a tool of choice for monitoring pangenomic gene expression. Although there are a large number of variations on the basic methodology the general approach remains standard and involves the comparison of a "test" RNA with a "control" RNA; in this case "healthy" and "virus-inf...

Understanding the nature of the relationship between viruses and their fungal hosts is critical in determining the ecological significance of mycoviruses and their potential usage as biological control agents. Two flexuous viruses belonging to the family Flexiviridae, Botrytis cinerea virus F (BCVF) and Botrytis virus X (BVX), from Botrytis cinerea...

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The full sequence of the nitrate reductase gene was obtained from a type isolate of Verticilliumfungicola var. fungicola and used for phylogenetic analysis against other ascomycete fungi. Sequencing obtained 2749 bp of coding region, 668 bp of 5' flanking sequence and 731 bp of 3' flanking sequence. In silico analysis indicated that the coding regi...

The objective of this research was to develop an efficient and reliable RNA extraction method suitable for Real time PCR. To minimize inconsistent results and low RNA yields when extracting viral RNA from Botrytis cinerea, a comparison was made between: (i) three commercial RNA extraction kits (RNeasy Mini Kit (Qiagen), TRIzol® (Invitrogen) and Yea...