| Professor Gail Preston, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford |
| Mon 30 Oct 2017, 12:05 - 13:00 |
| Swann 7.15 |
If you have a question about this talk, please contact: Louise Bishop (lbishop)
One of the most fundamental questions in the study of plant disease is the question of what factors determine whether a pathogen thrives, persists or dies during its interaction with its host? The bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, which causes a wide range of economically important plant diseases, colonises the apoplastic compartment that surrounds plant cells. It is therefore the biochemical and biophysical properties of the apoplastic environment that determine whether pathogens such as P. syringae successfully colonise host plants.
This seminar will discuss how analyses of apoplast composition can be combined with analyses of pathogen metabolism and gene expression to investigate how the microenvironment inside host tissues affects the outcome of infection, and how this knowledge can be used to improve disease control. I will also discuss the unusual case of metal hyperaccumulator plants, in which the accumulation of high concentrations of metal in foliar tissues confers protection against disease, but in which trade-offs between metal hyperaccumulation and plant immune mechanisms appear to have resulted in the loss of some aspects of the plant immune response.