conVIRgens SIGNED
De- and reconstructing virulence strategies of fungal plant pathogens
Total Cost €
0EC-Contrib. €
0Partnership
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Explore the words cloud of the conVIRgens project. It provides you a very rough idea of what is the project "conVIRgens" about.
Project "conVIRgens" data sheet
The following table provides information about the project.
| Coordinator |
UNIVERSITAET ZU KOELN
Organization address contact info |
| Coordinator Country | Germany [DE] |
| Total cost | 1˙922˙000 € |
| EC max contribution | 1˙922˙000 € (100%) |
| Programme |
1. H2020-EU.1.1. (EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)) |
| Code Call | ERC-2017-COG |
| Funding Scheme | ERC-COG |
| Starting year | 2018 |
| Duration (year-month-day) | from 2018-06-01 to 2023-05-31 |
Partnership
Take a look of project's partnership.
| # | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UNIVERSITAET ZU KOELN | DE (KOELN) | coordinator | 1˙922˙000.00 |
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Project objective
Fungal pathogens are enormous threats to plants, causing tremendous losses in worldwide crop production. Mechanistic understanding of fungal virulence is crucial to developing novel plant protection strategies in sustainable agriculture. Biotrophic pathogens colonize living plant tissue and reprogram their hosts to stimulate proliferation and development of infection structures. To promote infection, fungal pathogens secrete sets of virulence proteins termed “effectors” in a spatiotemporal program. Many economically relevant biotrophs like rusts and powdery mildew fungi are obligate pathogens. These organisms cannot be grown in culture and are not amenable to reverse genetics, which is a severe constraint for current research. In contrast, the biotrophic smut fungi have a haploid yeast stage, which allows simple cultivation and genetic modification. The causal agent of corn smut disease, Ustilago maydis, is one of the best-established model organisms for fungal genetics. This project aims to utilize the excellent genetic accessibility of U. maydis to approach a previously impossible, pioneering enterprise: the synthetic reconstruction of eukaryotic plant pathogens. In a first step, fungal virulence will be deconstructed by consecutive deletion of the U. maydis effector repertoire to generate disarmed mutants. These strains will serve as chassis for subsequent reconstruction of fungal pathogenicity from different sources. A combination of transcriptomics and comparative genomics will help to define synthetic effector modules to reconstruct virulence in the chassis strains. Deconstruction of U. maydis virulence will identify a complete arsenal of fungal virulence factors. Reconstruction of virulence will show how effector modules determine fungal virulence, including those of the previously not accessible obligate biotrophs. conVIRgens will thereby provide fundamentally new insights and novel functional tools towards the understanding of microbial virulence.
Publications
| year | authors and title | journal | last update |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 |
Weiliang Zuo, Jasper Depotter, Gunther Doehlemann Cas9HF1 enhanced specificity in Ustilago maydis published pages: , ISSN: , DOI: 10.1101/671826 |
2019-12-17 | |
| 2019 |
Jasper R L Depotter, Gunther Doehlemann Target the core: durable plant resistance against filamentous plant pathogens through effector recognition published pages: , ISSN: 1526-498X, DOI: 10.1002/ps.5677 |
Pest Management Science | 2019-12-17 |
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