One of the goals of this USDA-funded project is to assist members of the Phytophthora community in Phytophthora identification. For those of you who want to identify your collection based on gene sequences, we can provide a free sequencing service, if you agree to the following two conditions: (i) deposit your data (seq plus information associated with analyzed isolates, such as host, time, and geographic origins, pictures of disease symptoms) to the Phytophthora database (we can block access to your data until you publish your data and will deposi them to GenBank) and (ii) deposit key isolates to the WPC curated by Mike Coffey at UC-Riverside and/or other culture collection facilities. Your contribution will be acknowledged.

We will determine the sequence of the ITS regions for preliminary identification. Given the presence of most known Phytophthora species in the database, this sequence is often sufficient for species identification. We expect an acknowledge in your publication but no authorship (unless the number of isolates is more than 100 and we analyze the data for you). We can also help you with further characterization of potential new species by sequencing more genes (those described in a 2008 FG&B paper by Blair et al.) and conducting phylogenetic analyses. We can also arrange help with characterization of morphological and cultural traits.

What you need to do is sending genomic DNA of your isolates or amplified ITS fragments. The turn around time will mainly depend on the number of samples we receive (because we sequence samples in 96 well microtiter plates, if we do not have enough samples, we may wait). If you have more question about this offer, please contact Seogchan Kang at sxk55@psu.edu.