Arabidopsis 2010: Global Analysis of Plant Disease Resistance Pathways

与动物不同，植物缺乏特殊的免疫系统。植物细胞在履行其正常功能的同时，也必须防御病原体的侵染。这使得独立于其他生物过程研究植物免疫变得困难。为了充分了解植物如何应对病原体的挑战，系统生物学方法最有可能揭示植物免疫的关键调控网络，以及它们如何与生长和发育等过程相互作用。该项目的研究人员在开展植物免疫的系统生物学研究方面具有独特的地位，因为他们在利用模式生物拟南芥识别所有主要植物防御反应途径的基本成分以及建立将这些不同成分置于一个综合网络中的框架方面具有开创性的工作。然而，该网络中仍有许多部分缺失，包括阻性输出元件及其调节器的身份。另一个主要挑战是了解不同免疫反应之间的相互联系。这个项目的目的是确定这些缺失的组件，并不仅建立一个静态的网络，而且还建立植物免疫系统的动态模型。该项目取得的成果将在同行评议的期刊上发表，并在会议上散发。突变株和转基因株系将保存在拟南芥生物资源中心。大型数据集将在出版之前或出版时存放在公共数据库(例如，国家生物信息学研究所用于微阵列和核糖核酸序列数据的GEO)以及项目数据库(http://ausubellab.mgh.harvard.edu/nsf2010/index.jsp)中。了解植物对环境胁迫的适应机制是NSF2010项目的目标之一。该项目的成功将带来更好的、对环境友好的作物病害控制策略，并将为古典遗传学、植物病理学以及尖端基因组学和生物信息技术方面的本科生、研究生和博士后研究员提供极好的培训机会。

Unlike animals, plants lack a specialized immune system. Plant cells while performing their normal functions also have to defend against pathogen infection. This makes it difficult to study plant immunity independently of other biological processes. To fully understand how plants respond to pathogen challenge, a 'systems biology' approach is most likely to uncover key regulatory networks underlying plant immunity and how they interface with processes like growth and development. The investigators of this project are in a unique position to carry out systems biology studies of plant immunity because of their pioneering work in using the model organism Arabidopsis in identifying essential components for all the major plant defense response pathways and in establishing a framework for placing these diverse components in an integrated network. However, there are still many parts missing in this network, including the identities of resistance output components and their regulators. Another major challenge is to understand the interconnections between the different immune responses. This project aims to identify these missing components and to build not only a static network but also dynamic models of the plant immune system. The results obtained from this project will be published in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated at meetings. Mutants and transgenic lines will be deposited in the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center. Large data sets will be deposited in public databases (e.g., NCBI's GEO for microarray and RNA seq data) as well as in the project database (http://ausubellab.mgh.harvard.edu/nsf2010/index.jsp) prior to or at the time of publication. Understanding plant adaptive mechanisms to environmental stress is one of the objectives of the NSF2010 Project. The success of this project will lead to better, environmentally friendly strategies for controlling crop diseases and will provide excellent training opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in classical genetics, phytopathology as well as cutting-edge genomics and bioinformatics technologies.