Computational techniques for elucidating plant-pathogen interactions from large-scale experiments on fungi and...

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.