Uncovering oomycete metabolism using systems biology

Cell metabolism is a network of biochemical reactions that allows organisms to assimilate nutrients from their environment into their building blocks of life. There are many variables that influence this system, and this makes metabolism hard to study. Systems biology is a relatively new scientific discipline that tries to encapsulate biological phenomena into mathematical models, as a means to generate new, testable hypotheses. In this research we used systems biology to study the interactions that oomycetes can undergo with their hosts. Oomycetes are parasites of plants and animals, and especially their metabolism is hardly studied thus far. We performed large-scale comparative studies on the metabolic gene content of oomycetes, and model the metabolism of the late blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans. We integrate this model with a metabolic model of tomato, to predict the metabolic exchanges that take place during infection. We also study the repertoire of metalloproteases in oomycetes, a class of enzymes that have potential roles in host infection.