Welcome to the Phytophthora Functional Genomics Database.
Oomycetes are the most devastating pathogens of dicot plants, causing enormous economic damage to important crop species such as potato, tomato, and soybean, as well as environmental damage in natural ecosystems. Phytophthora form an evolutionarily unique group of fungus-like plant pathogens that have the remarkable ability to manipulate biochemical, physiological and morphological processes in their host plants. These manipulations are achieved through a diverse array of virulence factors that can either promote infection or trigger defense responses. By combining data mining of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) with virus-based high throughput functional expression assays, Dr. Kamoun's lab of the OARDC Plant Pathology Department, has devised a general approach for identifying effector proteins and genes that induce resistance responses, disease like symptoms and/or altered disease susceptibility from P. infestans. Using PFGD, the objective is to characterize effector genes and proteins with regards to primary sequence, gene expression, biological activity, cellular responses and cellular localization during infection.

The Phytophthora Functional Genomics Database is a publicly accessible resource that will include functional assays and expression data, combined with transcript analysis and annotation. PFGD builds upon data available from the Phytophthora Genome Consortium and the Syngenta Phytophthora Consortium as well as all publicly available P. infestans transcript data that are analyzed and annotated using NCGR's XGI System. For the most recent description of the P. infestans data see Randall et al. 2005. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 18:229-243. Gene-sequences derived from XGI will be linked to the full-length ORF's used in the functional assays and expression experiments. PFGD will also contain all pertinent metadata and curated annotations concerning these experiments. The knowledge gained from these studies will provide significant insight into key molecular processes regulating an economically important pathosystem and will provide novel tools for improvement of disease resistance in crop plants.

PFGD is available to all public users by clicking on the "Enter PFGD" button above. If you have feedback on this system or would like to report a bug, please respond using the feedback link below. Please be as specific as possible about the nature of the bug, the actions that led you to it, the URL where the bug occurred, and details about which browser and operating system you are using.

This site has been optimized to work using Netscape 7.x and Internet Explorer 5.x for Windows as well as Netscape 7.x for Macintosh. There are significant bugs in Internet Explorer 5.x for Mac OSX as well as known Javascript problems for both Windows and Mac using Netscape 6.x.

PFGD is supported by the National Science Foundation under Plant Genome Research Program Grant No. 0211659.

Citing PFGD

To cite or acknowledge PFGD, please use the following reference:
Phytophthora Functional Genomics Database (PFGD): functional genomics of phytophthora–plant interactions.
Nucleic Acids Research, 2006, Vol. 34, Database issue D465-D470.