Poster Session: Molecular and Cellular Plant-Microbe Interactions - Proteomics/Metabolomics/Genomics
769-P
PiAF, a Predicted Protein-Protein Interactome of Aspergillus flavus..
A. SUBEDI (1), B. M. Musungu (2), M. Geisler (2), R. L. Brown (3), D. Bhatnagar (3), A. M. Fakhoury (1)
(1) Department of Plant, Soil and Agriculture Systems, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, U.S.A.; (2) Department of Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, U.S.A.; (3) Southern Regional Research Center, USDA-ARS, New Orlean
Aspergillus flavus is a fungal plant pathogen known for the production of aflatoxin in many crops including corn, cotton, and peanut. Development of PiAF, a predicted protein-protein interaction (PPI) map of A. flavus allows the modeling of interactions for many of the primary metabolic processes, biological processes, and developmental processes in the fungus, helping thus in acquiring a better understanding of pathogenesis. PPI interactome maps have already been generated through the use of high throughput experimental methods in model organisms such as human, fruit fly, and arabidopsis. In this study, a PPI map for A. flavus was developed using the Inparanoid to determine one to one orthologies and many to many orthologies. Reference proteomes from baker’s yeast, fission yeast, and human were used in the analysis process. Proteins of interest, such as putative pathogenicity genes and developmental proteins hypothesized to be involved in aflatoxin production were used as focal hubs in the analysis of the network. Putative pathogenicity related proteins were predicted based on their interactions with already known proteins. PiAF was also used to mine for novel pathogenicity proteins. The information from a PPI map of one of the primary aflatoxin producing fungi, A. flavus, will aid in understanding the uncharacterized functional genomics of the fungus as well as in improving the systematic analysis of protein-protein interactions in fungi.