Powdery Mildew Resistance

Plant diseases lower crop yields significantly, and thereby threaten food-security worldwide. Powdery mildew fungi is a severe pathogen on numerous food-crops.

Generating food-crops resistant to these fungi would be a major step forward in the continuous fight between plants and pathogens, and it would tip the balance in the favor of food-security.

The proposed project will majorly contribute to this goal by elucidating the immunity related processes occurring upon fungal infection and will allow to develop breeding strategies to heighten plant immunity.

The barley powdery mildew fungus (Blumeria hordei) causes disease by secreting hundreds of effector proteins into the barley tissue.

One of the hallmarks of immunity is the formation of a structure called papilla, at the site of fungal penetration, which limit the damage to the plant. Evolutionary adapted fungi can easily overcome this. However, the pathway for secretion of proteins and other components to the papilla is not well understood.

There is thus a need to increase our understanding of how this secretion process occurs during immunity.

My host lab has uncovered that the membrane trafficking leading to papilla formation occurs by novel mechanisms not previously studied in plants.

In the proposed project, I will explore this highly complex field by identifying a list of fungal effectors which target this pathway, and I will use these effectors to find specific components of it.

Ceramides are predicted to play a role in the secretion of extracellular vesicles during this papilla formation in mammals, therefore, I will additionally take a targeted approach to characterize their role in plants.

My strong background and solid track-record, the expertise and experience of the host supervisor, together with the infrastructure and encouraging scientific atmosphere at the host department will synergistically maximise the output of the proposed project, and develop and diversify my skills as an independent researcher.