Application of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Tools in Plant–Fungus Interactions

Abstract

Fungi have been recognized to be a major cause of disease in immunocompromised hosts: moreover, the loss of food and fodder crops through fungi has been unmatched since the last decade. Fungi colonize the plant cell and organs by modulating the host defense response. A number of different methods have been recently used to understand host-fungus interactions. With the advent of HiSeq approaches, more fungal genomes and transcriptomes are now sequenced, and their bioinformatics analyses have enriched and assisted our knowledge of the interplay between plant and fungi. The present chapter reviews the current biotechnological and bioinformatics approaches for the study of plant-fungus interactions.