PECASE: Investigation of Disease-Resistance Proteins in Flowering Plants

提案标题：PECASE：调查开花植物中的抗病蛋白该机构：加州大学伯克利分校这个PECASE奖项提案的重点是三个方面：(1)本科生和研究生水平的计算生物学教学和培训；(2)继续发展分子生物学问题的计算方法；(3)利用这些工具，对细菌、病毒和真菌中的抗病蛋白和抗病途径及其效应分子进行新的研究。该团队将应用新的算法和软件来分析和阐明开花植物天然免疫的关键决定因素，预测这些重要蛋白质家族的结构、功能、途径和复杂参与等。生物学家的合作者将对这些预测进行实验研究，提供关键的反馈。由于植物无法移动以躲避病原体的攻击，它们已经开发出复杂的策略和防御机制。这些策略中的许多在昆虫和包括人类在内的其他动物身上都有推论。正因为如此，对植物抗病的研究有望产生不仅与提高抗病能力的新植物品系的基因工程(以及相应的作物产量增加和减少世界饥饿)相关的见解，而且还可以提高我们对所有真核生物的先天免疫的理解，并产生对人类健康重要的医学和制药进展。生物学家将为蛋白质功能和结构的预测提供关键的反馈、指导和实验验证。将开发软件和数据库技术，以便能够在发现新的植物和病原体蛋白时对其进行高通量分类和纳入。这一协同合作旨在将假设驱动和假设生成方法以及两个小组中包含的不同领域的专业知识和背景知识结合起来，以统一对这些重要蛋白质家族和途径的理解。该项目最初是作为一个职业奖而资助的，并于2004年9月转换为总统早期工程师和科学家职业奖(PECASE)奖。

Proposal Title: PECASE: Investigation of Disease-Resistance Proteins inFlowering PlantsInstitution: University of California-BerkeleyThe focus of this PECASE award proposal is threefold: (1) teaching and training in computational biology at the undergraduate and graduate levels; (2) continued development of computational methods for problems in molecular biology, and (3) new investigation, using these tools, into disease resistance proteins and pathways, and their effector molecules in bacteria, viruses and fungi. The team will apply new algorithms and software to the analysis and elucidation of key determinants of innate immunity in flowering plants, to predict structure, function, pathway and complex involvement, and so on, for these important protein families. Biologist collaborators will investigate these predictions experimentally, providing critical feedback.Since plants cannot move to escape pathogen attack, they have developed sophisticated strategies and defense mechanisms. Many of these strategies have corollaries in insects and other animals, including human. Because of this, research into plant disease resistance can be expected to produce insights that are relevant not only for genetic engineering of new strains of plants with improved disease resistance (and corresponding increased crop production, and reduction of world hunger), but also to improve our understanding of innate immunity in all eukaryotic organisms, and produce medical and pharmaceutical advances important for human health. The biologists will provide critical feedback, direction, and experimental validation of predictions of protein function and structure. Software and database technologies will be developed to enable the high-throughput classification and inclusion of new plant and pathogen proteins as they are discovered. This synergistic collaboration is designed to combine both hypothesis-driven and hypothesis-generating approaches and the different domain expertise and background knowledge contained in the two groups into a unified understanding of these important protein families and pathways.This project was originally funded as a CAREER award, and was converted to a Presidential Early Career Award for Engineers and Scientists (PECASE) award in September 2004.