禾谷刺盘孢菌在侵染早期与玉米蛋白的互作预测与分析

Prediction and Analysis on the Protein-protein Interactions between Colletotrichum graminicole and Zea mays at Early Stage of Infection

【目的】研究禾谷刺盘孢菌与寄主玉米的蛋白互作关系,有助于从分子水平了解病菌致病过程及病菌-寄主互作机制。【方法】采用计算方法预测病菌侵染相关蛋白与寄主玉米蛋白的互作,并结合网络可视化工具和GO注释信息对参与互作的蛋白进行深入分析。【结果】预测结果包含了355对互作蛋白,涉及16个刺盘孢菌蛋白和173个玉米蛋白,其中刺盘孢菌蛋白为蛋白酶、锌羧肽酶、木聚糖酶等潜在的致病蛋白,而病菌靶向的寄主蛋白涉及对真菌防御响应、蛋白折叠、蛋白修饰等多种生物过程。对互作蛋白信息的分析则表明预测方法既识别到已知互作,如病菌木聚糖酶与寄主木聚糖酶抑制蛋白的互作,也发现了不少新互作蛋白。【结论】这些结果为明确禾谷刺盘孢菌在侵染早期与寄主的互作机制提供了有用信息。

[Objective] The aim of the study was to investigate the protein-protein interactions （PPIs） between C. graminicole and Z. mays, which would help us understand the pathogenesis of the pathogen and pathogen-host interaction mechanism on the molecular level. [Method] The computational methods were used to predict the PPIs between Colletotrichum infection-related proteins and Z. mays proteins and network visualization tool and GO annotation information were used to further analyse the interacting pairs. [Results] The predicted results contained 355 PPI pairs, involving 16 pathogen proteins and 173 host proteins. Among them, the pathogen proteins were potential pathogenic factors, such as protease, zinc carboxypeptidase and xylanase, and the host proteins were involved in diverse biological process including defense response to fungus, protein folding and protein modification. Further investigation on the predicted PPI pairs revealed that the computational methods detected some known PPIs previously reported in the literature, such as pathogen xylanase and host xylanase inhibitor. In addition, the methods proposed many unknown PPIs as well. [Conclusion] The results provided useful information for illustrating the interaction mechanism of C. graminicole and host at early stage of infection.