While microbial colonization of wood is presumed to be characterized by a myriad of interactions between numerous organisms, studying these processes is often difficult owing to the opaque nature of the wood and the inability to readily distinguish among the many species colonizing the material. One method for enhancing the ability to distinguish organisms is to induce specific proteins in one or more organisms that can be detected using fluorescence or other light microscopic techniques. The insertion of genes for the production of green fluorescent proteins produced by the jellyfish, Aequora victoria, has been widely used to visualize a variety of organisms. In this report, we describe transformation of two fungi, Ophiostoma picea and Trichoderma harzianum using a green fluorescent protein (SGFP) gene under the control of the ToxA promoter of Pyrenophora tritici-repentis. The growth and wood colonization by two transformed fungi were compared to their non-transformed strains. The expression of gfp was particularly useful for studying the spatial distribution of young hyphae in wood.

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