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**8** 

*Spain* 

**Molecular Microbiology Applied to** 

*University of Cádiz, Puerto Real* 

**the Study of Phytopathogenic Fungi** 

Carlos Garrido, Francisco J. Fernández-Acero, María Carbú,

*Microbiology Laboratory, Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences* 

Victoria E. González-Rodríguez, Eva Liñeiro, and Jesús M. Cantoral

Fungi is an extensive group of eukaryotic microorganisms, generally they are microscopic and usually filamentous. It is estimated that there are between 70,000 and 1.5 millions species of fungi, most of them are being discovering and describing (Agrios, 2005). Most of the known hundred thousand fungal species are strictly saprophytic, living on decomposing dead organic matter. About fifty species cause disease in human, and more than ten thousand species can cause disease in one (obligate parasite) or many kinds of plants (non-

Phytopathogenic fungi are able to infect any tissue at any stage of plant growth. Plant pathogenic fungi show a complex life cycles, including both sexual and asexual reproduction stages (Agrios, 2005). Moreover, complex infection cycles and carbon assimilation is displayed (Garrido et al., 2010). These biological variability give them the possibility to develop its biological role from very climatologically different environments, since dry and desert zones until wet and hot regions in the tropic and equatorial area to the

During the last decades, the development of molecular methods has lead the Scientifics community to accumulate a high quantity of information from different molecular approaches (Fernández-Acero et al., 2011; Garrido et al., 2009b). Advances into Genomics, Transcriptomics, Proteomics, and more recently, Metabolomics are transforming research into fungal plant pathology, providing better and more accurate knowledge about the molecular biology and infection mechanisms showed by these fungi (Garrido et al., 2010). Since 1992, our research group has been working with two of the most aggressive plant pathogens, which have been established such a model organisms for molecular and phytaphology studies: *Botrytis cinerea* and *Colletotrichum acutatum* (Fernández-Acero et al., 2006b, 2007a; Garrido et al., 2009b, 2010; Perfect et al., 1999). These genera include some of the most destructive plant pathogen species known. They induce worldwide diseases as, between others, the grey mould on grapes and the anthracnose on strawberries, respectively (Coley-Smith et al., 1980; Elad et al., 2004; Sutton, 1992). The losses caused by the phytopathogenic fungi *Botrytis cinerea* and *Colletotrichum acutatum* have been quantified

**1. Introduction** 

obligate parasites) (Fernández-Acero et al., 2007a).

capacity to attack all plant tissues, from leaves to roots (Agrios, 2005).

