BIO5 Institute, 1657 Helen Street, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721, USA.
Brief Bioinform. 2009 Nov;10(6):654-63. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbp053.
Eukaryotic plant pathogens are responsible for the destruction of billions of dollars worth of crops each year. With large-scale genomics of both pathogens and hosts and the corresponding computational analysis, biologists are now able to gain knowledge about many pathogenic and defense genes concurrently. To study the interactions between these two organism groups, it is necessary to design experiments to elucidate the genes being expressed during the invasion of the pathogen into the host. For the most part, this does not require new software development, though it does require the use of existing software in novel ways. This article provides a broad overview of several key and illustrative experiments and the corresponding computational analyses, outlining the knowledge gained in each. It goes on to describe databases for plant-pathogen data and important initiatives such as Plant-Associated Microbe Gene Ontology. It discusses how various emerging approaches will increase the power of computers in host-pathogen interaction studies.
真核植物病原体每年导致价值数十亿美元的农作物被毁。通过对病原体和宿主的大规模基因组学研究和相应的计算分析，生物学家现在能够同时获得许多致病和防御基因的知识。为了研究这两组生物体之间的相互作用，有必要设计实验来阐明病原体侵入宿主时表达的基因。在大多数情况下，这并不需要新的软件开发，尽管它确实需要以新的方式使用现有的软件。本文提供了几个关键的、具有说明性的实验及其相应的计算分析的广泛概述，概述了在每个实验中获得的知识。它接着描述了植物病原体数据的数据库以及 Plant-Associated Microbe Gene Ontology 等重要计划。它讨论了各种新兴方法将如何提高计算机在宿主-病原体相互作用研究中的作用。
