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Project properties |
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| Title | Uncovering the gene regulatory network underlying appressorium formation in Magnaporthe oryzae |
| Group | Systems and Synthetic Biology |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Frank Pieterse, Rob Smith |
| Examiner(s) | Rob Smith, Maria Suarez Diez |
| Contact info | robert1.smith@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2025/07/01 |
| End date | |
| Description | Global food production is under pressure by a large variety of pathogenic fungi. As a result, large crop losses are incurred, and farmers need to apply potentially harmful pesticides on their fields. Many fungal plant infections start with the fungus forming an appressorium, a structure that builds up enormous pressure to breach through the host surface. This process is well-studied in the rice pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae. However, the regulatory behaviour of many transcription factors during this process is not known.
In this project, you will be applying several algorithms and bioinformatics tools to predict the regulatory network of transcription factors and target genes that mediate appressorium formation. You will learn how to predict transcription factor binding motifs, and how to use various network inference tools to predict transcription factor-target interactions. Once a network is inferred, you can explore how to use the network to connect transcription factors to several pathogenicity-related functions and you can explore how to clearly visualize the most important interactions predicted by the network, based on your own ideas and insight. References related to project: https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.259857 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-021-00978-w, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2021.11.012, |
| Used skills | |
| Requirements | Experience with programming and bioinformatics. Knowledge on either network biology or plant-microbe interactions. |