A post-gene silencing bioinformatics protocol for plant-defence gene validation and underlying process identification: case study of the Arabidopsis thaliana NPR1

Yocgo, Rosita E; Geza, Ephifania; Chimusa, Emile R; Mazandu, Gaston K

A post-gene silencing bioinformatics protocol for plant-defence gene validation and underlying process identification: case study of the Arabidopsis thaliana NPR1

Journal Article

2017

Journal Title

BMC Plant Biology

Link to Journal

https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12870-017-1151-y

Department

Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences (IBMS)

Faculty

Faculty of Health Sciences

Abstract

Advances in forward and reverse genetic techniques have enabled the discovery and identification of several plant defence genes based on quantifiable disease phenotypes in mutant populations. Existing models for testing the effect of gene inactivation or genes causing these phenotypes do not take into account eventual uncertainty of these datasets and potential noise inherent in the biological experiment used, which may mask downstream analysis and limit the use of these datasets. Moreover, elucidating biological mechanisms driving the induced disease resistance and influencing these observable disease phenotypes has never been systematically tackled, eliciting the need for an efficient model to characterize completely the gene target under consideration.