Plant & Animal Genomes XIII Conference

January 15-19, 2005
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

The Phytophthora Functional Genomics Database (PFGD)

Kamal Gajendran¹ , Andrew Farmer¹ , Eric Archuleta¹ , Michael D. Gonzales¹ , Sophien Kamoun² , Joe Win² , Mark E. Waugh³

¹  National Center for Genome Resources, 2935 Rodeo Park Drive East, Santa Fe, NM, 87505, USA

²  Department of Plant Pathology, The Ohio State University-OARDC, Selby Hall 212, 1680 Madison Avenue, Wooster, Ohio, 44691, USA

³  Combiogen Consulting, LLC, 18 Vista Del Monte, Santa Fe, NM, 87508, USA

Oomycetes, in particular Phytophthora spp., comprise a unique branch of destructive eukaryotic plant pathogens that are responsible for causing a number of the world’s most devastating diseases of dicot plants. Not only are these diseases difficult to manage, they cause enormous economic damage on important crop species such as potato, tomato and soybean, as well as environmental damage in natural ecosystems. These plant pathogenic microbes have the remarkable ability to manipulate biochemical, physiological and morphological processes in their host plants via effector molecules. In collaboration with Sophien Kamoun's lab at OSU-OARDC, we are building the Phytophthora Functional Genomics Database (PFGD). The Kamoun lab is characterizing effector gene and protein sequences, gene expression patterns, biological activity, and cellular responses and localization during infection. PFGD, available at www.pfgd.org, is a publicly accessible resource designed to capture this heterogeneous data in a useful and intuitive way for biological researchers. PFGD interrelates functional assays, transcript analysis and genomic analysis and will soon store and integrate expression data. PFGD builds upon data from Phytophthora Genome Consortium, along with publicly available P. infestans data, all of which are analyzed using NCGR's automated computational pipeline. For comparative analysis, PFGD will be integrated with NCGR's Oomycete Genomics Database (OGD: www.oomycete.org) and the Solanaceae Genomics Database (SolGD: www.solgd.org) to explore plant-pathogen interactions. The work is designed to provide significant insight into key molecular processes regulating an economically important pathosystem and a useful and accessible computational platform for the study of disease resistance in crop plants.