Optimization of protoplast production in plant pathogen fungus Fusarium graminearum in order to its transformation

We studied Fusarium graminearum, a filamentous ascomycets that causes severe epidemics of wheat head blight worldwide and contaminates grain with thrichothecene mycotoxins. an effective way to study the plant – pathogen interaction, the disease causing mechanism and genomics studies of plant pathogen fungi is fungi transformation. The availability of a perfect transformation system would let to study gene exchange, epidemiology and to utilize techniques such as gene disruption or gene silencing to investigate the role of fungal products in pathogenesis. Typical procedures for transforming filamentous fungi such as Fusarium sp. involve the preparation of fungal protoplast. The effect of spore amount, enzymes exposing time and mycelium age on preparation of protoplast were studied in this article.