Effector protein remote homology

Fungal effectors are a diverse group of proteins involved in promoting pathogenesis. Few known effectors share any significant sequence homology; however, recent structural studies have suggested the presence of broad families of effectors. These "families" (such as ToxA-like, MAX, and RALPH) typically exhibit little sequence similarity, but common tertiary or secondary structure. This study attempts to use sensitive HMM-HMM comparisons to cluster distantly related effector sequences to expand our understanding of effector histories, and enable easier effector discovery.