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The University of Southampton
Biological Sciences

The plant apoplast as a battleground in plant-pathogen interactions Event

Plant apoplast
Time:
13:00 - 14:00
Date:
26 April 2017
Venue:
Life Sciences Building 85, Room 2207, Highfield Campus

For more information regarding this event, please telephone Selina Barry on 24794 or email S.J.Barry@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Biological Sciences Seminar Series Programme 2016 - 2017

Abstract: 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 such as halo blight of bean and bacterial canker of kiwifruit, 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. In this seminar I will discuss how analyses of apoplast composition can be combined with analyses of pathogen metabolism and virulence gene expression to investigate the properties of the apoplastic environment, and to develop novel strategies to increase plant disease resistance. I will also discuss the unusual case of metal hyperaccumulator plants, in which the accumulation of high concentrations of metal in foliar tissues, and specifically in the apoplastic compartment, confers protection against disease.

Speaker information

Professor Gail Preston ,University of Oxford,Gail Preston studied Natural Sciences at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, followed by a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology at Cornell University. She was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2001. In 2009 she became a Programme Director at the University of Oxford's Doctoral Training Centre and she is currently the co-Director of the BBSRC-funded Oxford Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Partnership and a fellow of Linacre College.

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