Many effectors have been shown to contain diverse protein domain signatures that are typically found in eukaryotes,
In the Effective database, bioinformatic identification of eukaryotic-like domains is performed by evaluating the taxonomic distributions of protein domains in a representative number of genomes of pathogens, symbionts, non-pathogens and eukaryotes (classification of bacteria according to the organism info in the microbial genome projects list of the NCBI). All protein domains that occur in eukaryotes and pathogens or eukaryotes and symbionts, but not or only rarely in non-pathogens, are detected this way.
A domain enrichment score is calculated which is specific for each eukaryotic-like domain and each pathogen or symbiont genome.
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