Project Number: 6618-22000-028-04
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Jun 01, 2003
End Date: Jun 01, 2006

Objective:
The ultimate objective is to isolate, identify, and catalog genes is of economical concern to both U.S. and Israeli agriculture, the expressed during the life cycle of the whitefly B. tabaci, and use this information to understand the genetic components responsible for making this insect a severe agricultural pest. Since transmission of begomoviruses initial objective is to understand how the virus influences whitefly transcript abundance (transcript profile).

Approach:
cDNA libraries will be constructed from populations of adult male and female B. tabaci biotype B from Israel, Arizona and Florida, after they acquired for various periods of time mono and bipartite begomoviruses infecting tomato in Israel (Tomato yellow leaf curl virus TYLCV) and in the USA (Tomato mottle virus TMoV). Generation of EST datasets will be performed for each library and the clones will be used to construct high-density arrays that will be used in hybridization experiments to identify cDNA clones representing genes whose transcript abundance changes in response to virus acquisition.

Project Team

Shatters, Robert - Bob

Related National Programs

Crop Protection & Quarantine (304)