1 Combining wet-lab approaches and bioinformatics for the understanding of fungal non-self recognition and immunity

The recognition of non-self is essential for all cellular life forms. While these processes have been essentially studied in metazoans and higher plants, they operate also in other branches of the eukaryotic tree. We aim at a better understanding of the immune and non-self recognition processes in the fungal branch. We found in particular that like plants and animals, fungi display large repertoires of Nod-like receptors (NLRs) some of which at least function in the control of programmed cell death in response to the detection of non-self. We will attempt to describe how the question of the immune response in fungi is approached by a combination of wet-lab and bio-informatic approaches. In particular, we will describe the mechanism of diversification of NLRs in fungi and the role of prion amyloid signalling motifs in their activity. L20.2