Kataria Raghav, Kaundal Rakesh
Department of Plants, Soils, and Climate, College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, UT, 84322, USA.
Bioinformatics Facility, Center for Integrated BioSystems, Utah State University, Logan, UT, 84322, USA.
Plant Methods. 2022 Jun 3;18(1):73. doi: 10.1186/s13007-022-00897-9.
Triticum aestivum is the most important staple food grain of the world. In recent years, the outbreak of a major seed-borne disease, common bunt, in wheat resulted in reduced quality and quantity of the crop. The disease is caused by two fungal pathogens, Tilletia caries and Tilletia laevis, which show high similarity to each other in terms of life cycle, germination, and disease symptoms. The host-pathogen protein-protein interactions play a crucial role in initiating the disease infection mechanism as well as in plant defense responses. Due to the availability of limited information on Tilletia species, the elucidation of infection mechanisms is hampered.
We constructed a database WeCoNET ( http://bioinfo.usu.edu/weconet/ ), providing functional annotations of the pathogen proteins and various tools to exploit host-pathogen interactions and other relevant information. The database implements a host-pathogen interactomics tool to predict protein-protein interactions, followed by network visualization, BLAST search tool, advanced 'keywords-based' search module, etc. Other features in the database include various functional annotations of host and pathogen proteins such as gene ontology terms, functional domains, and subcellular localization. The pathogen proteins that serve as effector and secretory proteins have also been incorporated in the database, along with their respective descriptions. Additionally, the host proteins that serve as transcription factors were predicted, and are available along with the respective transcription factor family and KEGG pathway to which they belong.
WeCoNET is a comprehensive, efficient resource to the molecular biologists engaged in understanding the molecular mechanisms behind the common bunt infection in wheat. The data integrated into the database can also be beneficial to the breeders for the development of common bunt-resistant cultivars.
普通小麦是世界上最重要的主食谷物。近年来，小麦中一种主要的种传病害——腥黑穗病的爆发导致了作物质量和产量的下降。该病害由两种真菌病原体引起，即小麦网腥黑粉菌和小麦光腥黑粉菌，它们在生命周期、萌发和病害症状方面彼此高度相似。宿主 - 病原体蛋白质 - 蛋白质相互作用在引发病害感染机制以及植物防御反应中起着关键作用。由于关于腥黑粉菌属物种的信息有限，感染机制的阐明受到阻碍。
我们构建了一个数据库WeCoNET（http://bioinfo.usu.edu/weconet/），提供病原体蛋白质的功能注释以及各种用于探索宿主 - 病原体相互作用和其他相关信息的工具。该数据库实现了一个宿主 - 病原体相互作用组学工具来预测蛋白质 - 蛋白质相互作用，随后进行网络可视化、BLAST搜索工具、先进的“基于关键词”搜索模块等。数据库中的其他功能包括宿主和病原体蛋白质的各种功能注释，如基因本体术语、功能域和亚细胞定位。作为效应蛋白和分泌蛋白的病原体蛋白质也已纳入数据库，并附有各自的描述。此外，还预测了作为转录因子的宿主蛋白质，并提供了它们所属的各自转录因子家族和KEGG途径。
WeCoNET是从事了解小麦腥黑穗病感染背后分子机制的分子生物学家的全面、高效资源。整合到数据库中的数据对培育抗腥黑穗病品种的育种者也有益处。
