Prediction and Discovery of Host Metabolites and Metabolic Pathways Required for Proliferation of an Obligate Fungal Biotroph

白粉病是一种广泛存在的真菌病原体，会造成重大作物损失，易感作物需要定期处理以限制感染。大多数人在他们的花园中观察到与白粉病有关的白色粉状生长，例如在玫瑰的叶子上。白粉病是专性生物营养物，这意味着它们只能在活的植物上生长和繁殖。因此，它们从植物宿主那里获得所有的营养。该项目的目标是结合分子遗传学和基因组学，分析化学，信息学和建模的前沿方法，以确定白粉病生长和繁殖所需的特定植物代谢物。这项工作的广泛影响包括为研究界开发研究白粉病和类似类型的生物营养物的新工具和资源，确定限制白粉病生长的新目标，在限制化学处理的同时提高作物产量，以及培训和指导我们的下一代科学家，包括代表性不足的少数民族学生，在跨学科科学领域。白粉病寄主植物系统独特地适合于开发工具和方法，这些工具和方法可以更广泛地应用于研究生物间代谢和发育。本项目将迭代建立基于约束的白粉病-寄主植物综合代谢代谢模型，预测寄主和真菌的代谢途径。这将通过：i)开发新的计算和实验平台，工具和方法来实现，ii)确定专性真菌生物营养物发育和增殖所需的关键代谢物和途径，以及iii)确定营养需求以实现无菌培养。该项目还寻求获得养分库代谢的基本见解，因为当地植物细胞被用来为真菌的持续生长和繁殖提供燃料，以及关于病原体的控制点和途径的知识。更广泛的影响包括推进白粉病-植物宿主相互作用的知识，通过指导学生和博士后培养下一代跨学科STEM科学家，为更广泛的科学界开发，测试和使用综合代谢数据库和预测工具，以及确定限制白粉病生长和繁殖的新目标。

Powdery mildews are widespread fungal pathogens that cause major crop loss and susceptible crops are regularly treated to limit infection. Most people have observed the white powdery-like growth associated with powdery mildews in their gardens for example, on leaves of roses. Powdery mildews are obligate biotrophs, meaning they can only grow and reproduce on living plants. As such, they obtain all nutrients from the plant host. The goal of this project is to couple cutting edge approaches in molecular genetics and genomics, analytical chemistry, informatics and modeling to identify the specific plant metabolites required by the powdery mildew for its growth and reproduction. Broader impacts of this work include developing novel tools and resources for the study of powdery mildews and similar types of biotrophs for the research community, identifying novel targets to limit powdery mildew growth to enhance crop yield while limiting chemical treatments, and training and mentoring our next generation of scientists,including under-represented minority students, in cross-disciplinary science. The powdery mildew-host plant system is uniquely suited to the development of tools and approaches that can be applied more generally for the study of inter-organismal metabolism and development. This project will iteratively create a constraint-based powdery mildew-host plant integrated metabolic metabolic model to predict host and fungal metabolic pathways. This will be accomplished by: i) developing novel computational and experimental platforms, tools, and approaches, ii) identifying critical metabolites and pathways required by obligate fungal biotrophs for their development and proliferation, and iii) determining nutritional requirements to enable axenic culturing. The project also seeks to obtain fundamental insights into nutrient reservoir metabolism as local plant cells are used to fuel the sustained growth and reproduction of the fungus, as well as knowledge about control points and pathways targeted by pathogens. The broader impacts include advancing knowledge of the powdery mildew - plant host interaction, training our next generation of cross-disciplinary STEM scientists through mentoring of students and postdocs, development, testing, and use of integrated metabolic databases and prediction tools for the broader scientific community, and identifying novel targets to limit powdery mildew growth and reproduction.