DNA addition or deletion is associated with a major karyotype polymorphism in the fungal phytopathogen Colletotrichum gloeosporioides.

A 1.2 Mb minichromosome resolved by pulsed-field electrophoresis was present in two independent race 3 isolates of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides causing Type B anthracnose specifically on Stylosanthes guianensis cv. Graham in Australia. This chromosome was absent in duplicate isolates representing races l, 2 and 4 which infect other S.guianensis cultivars. A gene library was prepared specifically from the 1.2 Mb minichromosome and ten independent DNA clones unique to this chromosome were identified by differential hybridisation to whole chromosome probes. All of the ten selected probes hybridised only to the 1.2 Mb minichromosome unique to the race 3 isolates but not to anychromosome in isolates of the other races. These ten probes also hybridised only to restriction-digested DNA of race 3 and were thus both chromosome- and strain specific for Type B C. gloeosporioides. Hybridisation analysis of Not1 fragments of the 1.2 Mb minichromosome with these sequences indicated that they were not tightly clustered on the chromosome. These data demonstrate that the variation in the occurrence of the 1.2 Mb minichromosome did not arise by rearrangement of the genome of a progenitor strain but involved either large scale deletion or addition of DNA. The 1.2 Mb minichromosome did not contain a cloned high-copy-number repeat sequence present on all other mini - and maxichromosomes, suggesting addition from a genetically distinct strain. All ten chromosome-specific DNA probes hybridised to a 2.0 Mb chromosome in all races of C. gloeosporioides causing Type A anthracnose on Stylosanthes spp. including S. guianensis. Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis demonstrated that only 15% of the hybridising restriction fragments of the Type A 2.0 Mb chromosome and the 1.2 Mb Type B race 3 minichromosome were identical. This indicated that it is unlikely that the 1.2 Mb minichromosome of the race 3 Type B pathogen was recently introgressed from the Type A pathogen.