Abstract of Special Session Presentation

Diseases of Plants
Faces of the Future in Mycology—A Look to the Future

Genomic and proteomic approaches for dissecting host – pathogen interactions. T. K. Mitchell. Department of Plant Pathology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. Phytopathology 98:S186.

Over the past decade, the development of genome based technologies has revolutionized large-scale biology and revealed the genome content of a rapidly growing number of organisms. Now the challenge is to understand the function and regulation of identified genes within the context of an organism’s biology and life style. For the rice blast pathosystem, we are fortunate to have a completed genome sequences for both rice and Magnaporthe grisea, the causal agent of rice blast disease. Few pathosystems rival rice blast for its impact on human nutrition, the sophistication of molecular and classical genetic tools available for research, and its amenability to laboratory manipulation. Using a bioinformatics approach, we have annotated 595 genes predicted to function directly as transcription factors or in support of transcriptional activity. cDNA from >80% of these predicted genes were cloned and their proteins expressed in yeast. The proteins were subsequently spotted on glass slides to generate the M. grisea transcription protein array. The chip was hybridized with kinases known to be involved in infection structure formation to identify their targets for phosphorylation. This talk will detail the identification and functional characterization or transcription factors required for successful infection and the genes they regulate.

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