Understanding how plant pathogens cause disease - who does what to whom and where?

植物病原体是全球作物损失和食品腐败的主要原因之一。因此，了解植物如何感知和应对病原体对于了解如何培育具有更好病原体抗性的植物至关重要。植物和病原体之间的相互作用非常复杂，但病原体的感知是通过2个主要的蛋白质组来实现的;受体样激酶感知细胞外刺激，如细菌蛋白和细胞壁片段，而R-蛋白感知由分泌到植物细胞中的病原体蛋白（称为“效应物”）引起的蛋白质功能和活性的细胞内变化。理解这些蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用对于我们理解植物对病原体的抗性或易感性的过程至关重要。作为一个农艺学相关的模型系统，我们利用马铃薯晚疫病的病原菌--卵菌致病霉（Phytophthora infestans）和模式植物本氏烟草（Nicotiana benthamiana）来研究植物-病原菌的相互作用。（以及所有其他生物）由于各种原因而受到限制，但主要是因为所有这些方法都是侵入性的，破坏性的或不反映发生相互作用的细胞的天然环境。这意味着我们定义蛋白质复合物组成的能力，特别是这些复合物在病原体挑战等刺激后如何变化的能力非常差。因此，该领域迫切需要新的方法来推动未来的研究。我们最近开发了一种新的酶介导的方法来绘制体内蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用，该方法是非侵入性的，并保持了天然植物细胞环境的完整性。这使我们能够识别和分析变化的蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用在一个有意义的细胞背景下，提取迄今为止不可用的informations.The本项目的目的是开发这个系统进一步使用合成生物学方法，并使用它来识别新的相互作用的合作伙伴的植物R-蛋白和致病疫霉效应。鉴定的蛋白质将评估其在防御病原体攻击或促进病原体毒力方面的作用，最终目的是改善作物保护策略和帮助粮食安全。

Plant pathogens are one of the major global causes of crop loss and food spoilage. Understanding how plants perceive and respond to pathogens is therefore vital in understanding how to breed plants with improved pathogen resistance. The interactions between plants and pathogens is very complex but perception of pathogens is achieved by 2 major groups of proteins; receptor-like kinases perceive extracellular stimuli such as bacterial proteins and cell wall fragments, while R-proteins perceive intracellular changes to protein function and activity caused by pathogen proteins (termed "effectors") that have been secreted into the pant cell. Understanding these protein-protein interactions is critical to our understanding of the processes underlying plant resistance or susceptibility to pathogens. As an agronomically-relevant model system we use the Oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans, the causative agent of potato late blight, and the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana to study plant-pathogen interactions.Traditional methods to study protein-protein interactions in plants (and all other organisms) are limited for a variety of reasons, but largely because all of these methods are invasive, destructive or do not reflect the native environment of the cell where interactions are taking place. This means that our ability to define the composition of protein complexes, and particularly how these complexes change after a stimulus such as pathogen challenge, is very poor. The field is therefore in critical need of new approaches to drive future research.We have recently developed a new enzyme mediated method to map protein-protein interactions in-vivo that is non-invasive and maintains the native plant cellular environment intact. This allows us to identify and analyse changing protein-protein interactions in a meaningful cellular context and extract hitherto unavailable information.The aim of this project is to develop this system further using synthetic biology methods and use it to identify new interacting partners of plant R-proteins and Phytophthora infestans effectors. Identified proteins will be assessed for their roles in defending against pathogen attack or promoting pathogen virulence with the ultimate aim of improving crop protection strategies and aiding food security.