Altogether these analyses revealed a strong overlap between the impacts of all the three isolates.
Using this criterion, a strain-versus-strain gene difference matrix was generated, where the difference matrix represents the number of genes/alleles that differs between any two isolates.
To analyse the variation between isolates, results for the different clonal lines were combined with no significant difference observed between the three isolates of Phytophthora pluvialis that were applied (Figure 9).
Chromosome alignments indicated significant conservation of genome architecture between the three isolates.
More generally, with the exception of the Type 3 var genes and var1csa, the UpsA-associated var genes are not highly conserved between the three isolates.
For each isolate pair, significant changes in virulence were observed between the two isolates (in all cases, p < 0.001, log-rank test), with three of the four evolved isolates being more virulent than their corresponding progenitor.
In contrast, all of the genes shared between the two isolates are at least 99% identical over 99% or more of their length, as determined by blastn.
On the contrary, splenic and hepatic colony counts declined progressively in all mice to nearly undetectable levels, showing no significant differences between the two isolates (results not shown).
Dot plot analysis of ATV vs RRV sequences identified several polymorphisms between the two isolates.
Intriguingly, we discovered statistically significant and divergent levels of gene expression between the two isolates profiled for 64 genes.
