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

白粉病是广泛分布的真菌病原体，导致主要作物损失，并且定期处理易感作物以限制感染。大多数人都观察到白色粉末状增长与粉状霉菌在他们的花园，例如，在玫瑰的叶子。白粉病是专性生物营养体，这意味着它们只能在活的植物上生长和繁殖。因此，它们从植物宿主中获得所有营养。该项目的目标是结合分子遗传学和基因组学，分析化学，信息学和建模的尖端方法，以确定白粉病生长和繁殖所需的特定植物代谢物。这项工作的更广泛的影响包括开发新的工具和资源，用于研究白粉病和研究界的类似类型的生物营养体，确定限制白粉病生长的新目标，以提高作物产量，同时限制化学处理，并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。 白粉病寄主植物系统是唯一适合的工具和方法，可以更广泛地应用于生物体间的代谢和发展的研究的发展。该项目将迭代创建基于约束的白粉病-宿主植物综合代谢模型，以预测宿主和真菌的代谢途径。 这将通过以下方式实现：i）开发新的计算和实验平台、工具和方法，ii）鉴定专性真菌生养体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。该项目还试图获得对营养库代谢的基本见解，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，以及有关病原体所针对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，开发，测试和使用综合代谢数据库和预测工具为更广泛的科学界培训我们的下一代跨学科STEM科学家，并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.