Systems Biology of the Plant Effector-Triggered Immunity Landscape

农业病虫害每年使六种最大的粮食作物减产40%。然而，植物病害是例外，而不是规则。大多数植物是如何抵抗感染的？成功的病原体是如何克服植物的防御而致病的？这些问题的答案在很大程度上是在病原体和它们的宿主之间的界面上解决的。了解这种分子对话不仅对保护我们的食物供应很重要，而且为研究与发病机制和宿主免疫相关的基本问题提供了一个非凡的系统。我的研究小组在表征病原体操纵寄主植物以致病的一系列方式，以及植物如何检测这些扰动以激活免疫反应方面取得了由NSERC资助的重大进展。目前的研究方案建立在我们对植物-微生物相互作用领域的贡献之上。我们的长期目标是保护农作物免受病原体侵袭。为了实现这一目标，我们提出了三个目标：1.研究寄主物种内和寄主之间的免疫多样性，包括野生植物和驯化植物。2.研究致病毒力蛋白(效应物)之间的相互作用，以确定效应器网络如何影响宿主-病原菌的结果。3.绘制病原菌毒力蛋白与其宿主靶标之间的界面图，以了解决定宿主-病原菌相互作用结果的分子对话。这项研究将确定控制寄主-病原菌相互作用结果的病原体效应因子和寄主抗性基因，为研究作物与病原菌之间的分子相互作用机制提供基础信息，并为培育抗病作物开发新的遗传资源。我们将深入了解植物免疫反应在作物驯化过程中的变化，特别是这一过程如何影响驯化作物的免疫多样性的维持。这些研究将使我们能够更好地应对细菌病原体施加的无情挑战；随着全球气候变化的后果变得更加紧迫，这一威胁只会增加。

Agricultural pest and pathogens reduce the yield of the six largest food crops by >40% annually. However, plant diseases are the exception rather than the rule. How do the majority of plants resist infection? How do successful pathogens overcome the defenses of plants to cause disease? The answers to these questions are largely resolved at the interface between pathogens and their hosts. Understanding this molecular dialog is not only important for protecting our food supply, but also provides an extraordinary system for studying fundamental questions related to pathogenesis and host immunity. My research group has made significant NSERC funded advances in characterizing the range of ways that a pathogen can manipulate a host plant in order to cause disease and how plants can detect these perturbations to activate immune responses. The current research proposal builds on our contributions to the plant-microbe interactions field. Our long-term objective is to protect crop plants from pathogens. To achieve this goal we propose three objectives: 1. Study immunodiversity within & between host species including both wild and domesticated plants. 2. Study interactions between pathogenic virulence proteins (effectors) to determine how effector networks influence host-pathogen outcomes. 3. Map the interface between pathogen virulence proteins and their host targets to understand the molecular dialog that dictates the outcome of host-pathogen interactions. This study will identify pathogen effectors and host resistance genes that govern the outcome of host-pathogen interactions, providing fundamental information on the mechanisms underlying the molecular interplay between crops and their pathogens, as well as develop new genetic resources for breeding resistant crops. We will provide insight into how the plant immune response has changed over the course of crop domestication, especially how this process has impacted the maintenance of immunodiversity in domesticated crops. These studies will better enable us to respond to the unrelenting challenge imposed by bacterial pathogens; a threat that will only increase as the consequences of global climate change become more immediate.