Comparative Systems Biology In Pathosystems From Oomycetes To Malaria Parasites

The interface of host-microbe interaction is the common focus of several important research fields, such as plant pathology, veterinary sciences and infectious diseases.  The advance of genomics and functional genomics of prominent eukaryotic pathogens, such as the malaria parasite and the Irish famine pathogen, have fueled our understanding of this dynamic interaction. Large amount of genomic, as well as phenotypic data, have been generated by technologies such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and high throughput RNAi screening. We aim at integrating the large sets of genomic, transcriptomic, and phenotypic data and gaining systems level understanding of these important pathogen-host interactions. We have used novel bioinformatic algorithms to discover the large pathogen effector reservoirs that remodel the plant host cell and human erythrocytes. And we have performed RNA-seq based transcriptome analysis to capture the pathogen gene expression signatures directly from the host niche in oomycete pathogens. Finally we are carrying out a systematic RNAi screening to knock down every gene in human erythrocyte to map out all host determinants for the malaria blood stage infection. Several themes of host modulation during the pathogenesis processes have emerged from reconstructing the interaction systems of the human, animal and plant pathogens.