植物病害分子流行学概述

Brief introduction to molecular epidemiology of plant diseases

本文概要地介绍了植物病理学新研究领域——植物病害分子流行学的基本概念、进展和在几个主要方面的研究实例。分子生物技术在病原鉴定方面得到了广泛应用;定量的分子生物技术在测定病菌初侵染源方面显示出特有的快速、准确的优势;分子流行学应用分子生物技术监测病害和病原菌群体的动态,克服了传统流行学方法的弱点;作为有力的补充,分子生物技术正在用于探讨和推测病原菌远距离传播的路径,并注重研究病原菌群体的时、空动态变化,病原菌的长期进化,以及与病害发展的关系;病原群体的竞争将得到更深入的研究以揭示其变化是如何导致植物病害大流行;应用分子流行学手段,植物抗病性的鉴定将大大加速和简化;病害防治策略的制定将具有更科学的依据。宏观与微观研究手段的结合将越来越显示其在植物病害流行学研究中的巨大潜力。

This paper briefly introduces the basic concepts of a new field of plant pathology molecular epidemiology of plant diseases. Molecular biology and biotechnology have been widely used in many areas of epidemiology. In addition to identify the disease-causal pathogens, some molecular approaches have been used to efficiently quantify the initial inoculum causing disease epidemics, demonstrating the advantages over the conventional methods. Population genetics provides useful tools to infer the pathways of pathogen long-dis- tance dispersal and disease spread, and may offer strong evidences of pathogen migration as complement of conventional methods. These bio-techniques have been also used to monitor the spatial and temporal develop- ments of diseases and pathogen populations, to study the pathogen long-term evolution and its effects on disease epidemics, and to reveal the competitions between different pathogen genotypes and the resulting conse- quences of disease epidemics. Using molecular approaches, screening host resistance will become more effi- cient. More valuable disease control strategies will become applicable with applications of bio-techniques. Macro- and Micro-approaches will be combined as advantages of methodology, demonstrating a huge potential to promote the research in epidemiology.