BOTY, A LONG-TERMINAL-REPEAT RETROELEMENT IN THE PHYTOPATHOGENIC FUNGUS BOTRYTIS-CINEREA

The phytopathogenic fungus Botrytis cinerea can infect an extremely wi de range of host plants (tomato, grapevine, strawberry, and flax) with out apparent specialization. While studying genetic diversity in this fungus,,ve found an element which is present in multiple copies and di spersed throughout the genome of some of its isolates. DNA sequence an alysis revealed that the element contained direct, long-terminal repea ts (LTRs) of 596 bp whose features were characteristic of retroviral a nd retrotransposon LTRs. Within the element, we identified an open rea ding frame with sequences homologous to the reverse transcriptase acid RNase H domains of retroelement pol genes. We concluded that the elem ent we had identified was a retroelement and named it Boty. By compari ng its open reading frame with sequences from other retroelements, we found that Boty is related to the gypsy family of retrotransposons. Bo ty was present in numerous strains isolated from grapes and tomatoes b ut not in isolates from lentils. We propose that Boty-containing and B oty-deficient groups represent two lineages in the population of B. ci nerea.