NC State Researchers Assemble Pathogen ‘Tree of Life' with T-BAS Toolkit

A new and first-of-its-kind online tool for plant pathogens will help researchers identify, detect, and monitor Phytophthora species, which have been responsible for plant diseases ranging from the devastating 1840s Irish potato famine to sudden oak death that still plagues West Coast oak populations.

The new pathogen tool “tree of life” provides information about each of the more than 192 formally described species – including their evolutionary history and relationships within groups – as well as more than 30 other informally described taxa. The tool also includes genetic sequence data from several locations on the genome of each species. Other important data include the global locations of each species, the plants that host the pathogen, and where the pathogen resides in – or on – its plant hosts.

The living "tree of life" is made possible using Tree-Based Alignment Selector (T-BAS) toolkit that was developed by researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State) led by Ignazio Carbone. The new tool will allow researchers to update plant disease information in real-time. The T-BAS Tool is housed in the DeCIFR web portal available through NC State's Center for Integrated Fungal Research, which explores fungi and the roles they play in agricultural, animal, environmental, and human health systems.

For more details, read the article in NC State University News. The T-BAS tool is described in an open-access paper published in PLOS ONE.