Master manipulators: How pathogens use effectors to cause disease

植物病害是对粮食生产的持续威胁。在气候变化的背景下，它们是实现全球粮食安全的主要制约因素。许多植物疾病是由病原体引起的，病原体将被称为效应器的蛋白质输送到宿主细胞中，以操纵宿主功能，从而使病原体受益。研究病原体效应蛋白的功能对于理解疾病的基本生物学基础是必不可少的，也为干预疾病的发展和维持健康的植物/作物养活世界提供了新的机会。在这个项目中，学生将研究谷物杀手稻瘟菌是如何使用效应器来引起稻瘟病的，这些作物包括水稻、小麦和大麦。将在体外和植物组织中使用各种生化和生物物理技术来研究一组来自米曲霉的新型效应物。该项目将确定植物中选定的效应物的寄主细胞靶标，并(1)使用生化和结构方法探索相互作用的细节，(2)调查突变(缺失和点突变)对病原菌致病能力的影响。

Plant diseases are a continuous threat to food production. They are a major constraint on achieving global food security against the background of climate change. Many plant diseases are caused by pathogens that deliver proteins known as effectors into host cells to manipulate host function for the benefit of the pathogen. Studying the function of pathogen effector proteins is essential to understanding the fundamental biology underpinning disease, but also provides new opportunities to interfere with disease progression and maintaining healthy plants/crops to feed the world. In this project, the student will investigate how the cereal killer Magnaporthe oryzae uses effectors to cause blast disease of grass crops including rice, wheat and barley. A set of novel effectors from M. oryzae will be studied using a variety of biochemical and biophysical techniques both in vitro and in plant tissue. The project will identify the host cell targets of selected effectors from plants, and (1) probe the details of interactions using biochemical and structural approaches, (2) investigate the impact of mutation (deletion and point mutations) on the ability of the pathogen to cause disease on plants.