Genetic characterization of Phytophthora nicotianae by analysis of mitochondrial DNA

Phytophthora nicotianae is a polyphagous pathogen infecting more than one thousand different species of host-plants and causing serious economic losses worldwide Despite the importance of this species, current knowledge of its genetic variability is mostly restricted to populations from tobacco.In the present study, a new approach based on the analysis of very variable mitochondrial intergenic regions was applied to study intraspecific variability in P.nicotianae.Results of the present study demonstrate that variable mitochondrial intergenic regions are a suitable genomics platform to study phylogenetic relationships within P.nicotianae. This method could be extended to other Phytophthora species Moreover it could be implemented by the identification and analysis of other variable mitochondrial and/or nuclear genomic regions. An additional major advantage isthat DNA sequences obtained with this method can be deposited in GenBank thusproviding an easily and freely available molecular database.