Sociedade Brasileira de Genética, Genetics and Molecular Biology, 3 suppl(30), p. 972-979, 2007
DOI: 10.1590/s1415-47572007000500025
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Citrus is the most important fruit crop in Brazil and Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) is considered one of the most important pathogens of citrus. Most citrus species and varieties are susceptible to CTV infection. However, Poncirus trifoliata, a close relative of citrus, is resistant to the virus. In order to better understand the responses of citrus plants to the infec-tion of CTV, we constructed expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries with tissues collected from Poncirus trifoliata plants, inoculated or not with Citrus tristeza virus at 90 days after inoculation, grafted on Rangpur lime rootstocks. We generated 17,867 sequence tags from Poncirus trifoliata inoculated (8,926 reads) and not (8,941 reads) with a se-vere CTV isolate. A total of 2,782 TCs (Tentative Consensi sequences) were obtained using both cDNA libraries in a single clusterization procedure. By the in silico hybridization approach, 289 TCs were identified as differentially ex-pressed in the two libraries. A total of 121 TCs were found to be overexpressed in plants infected with CTV and were grouped in 12 primary functional categories. The majority of them were associated with metabolism and defense re-sponse. Some others were related to lignin, ethylene biosynthesis and PR proteins. In general, the differentially ex-pressed transcripts seem to be somehow involved in secondary plant response to CTV infection.