Past PMB Seminars
For a schedule of all Plant & Microbial Biology events, seminars, and lectures visit our calendar.
Exploring Transcription Factor Evolution and Function in Polyploid Wheat
Whole genome duplication is widespread in plant evolutionary history including in staple crops such as wheat. Functional redundancy between duplicated gene copies can mask phenotypic effects, reducing the pool of variation available for crop improvement. I will discuss our recent work analysing duplicated transcription factors in wheat, the impacts on gene expression and the implications for...
Gut Microbiome Interactions with Vibrio cholerae Pathogenesis
The bacterium Vibrio cholerae causes cholera, a devastating diarrhea disease that affects millions of people worldwide each year. Cholera is endemic in many areas that suffer from poor sanitation infrastructure, and imposes an immense burden in terms of mortality and illness, often on those countries least able to afford it. Despite advances in understanding how V. cholerae causes disease, there...
Sensing of Bacterial 3-hydroxy Fatty Acid Metabolites by the LORE Immune Receptor Complex
Plants coexist with a microbiota that can be beneficial or detrimental to plant fitness. We aim to understand how cell surface immune receptors sense and regulate microbial colonization at the cellular and physiological levels. We have identified the cell surface immune receptor LORE in cruciferous plants that recognizes small bacterial 3-hydroxy fatty acid (3-HFA) metabolites and are...
Viruses, Polyamines, and a Side of Fries: Connected Metabolic Pathways that Modulate RNA Virus Infection
Polyamines are small metabolites crucial to RNA virus infection, but they’re also critical to cellular metabolism. We’ve discovered new connections between polyamine metabolism and other cellular metabolic pathways that RNA viruses coopt to promote their replication.
A Mutation is a Mutation is a Mutation
We are living in an era of rapid global change, and how quickly organisms can adapt to these rapid changes is an important question. Adaptation proceeds through migration and new combination of existing genetic variants, but it may also rely on new mutations. For many years, my lab has been interested in the rate and spectrum of spontaneous mutations. We were the first to measure these in...
Competition, Coevolution, and Pathogen Suppression in the Microbiome
Microbes and plants exist within complex networks of interacting plant and microbial species. Our work explores the roles of plant community diversity, plant host, and fungal and bacterial species interactions in determining the pathogen-suppressive potential and composition of plant-associated microbiomes. Unraveling the complex competitive and coevolutionary interactions occurring within plant and soil microbiomes suggests novel insights for active management of microbiomes to support plant productivity.
Fighting with phages: how epidemic Vibrio cholerae defends against viral attack
The arms race between genomic parasites like viruses and their host organisms is a key driving force shaping the evolution of all forms of life. Predatory bacterial viruses, known as phages, select for bacteria that evade predation and influence the mobilization and dissemination of genetic material. To understand how these dynamics play out in nature, my lab has focused on the infectious...
Innovation, Conservation and Repurposing in Root Cell Type Development
Plant root cell types are able to integrate environmental stresses with their developmental programs for adaptive outcomes. In this seminar, I will discuss our lab's efforts to map cell type resolution molecular signatures, to understand their diversity in multiple plant species and how these programs can be repurposed across different cell types.
Siobhan Braybrook: What do walls have to do with it? Multiscale implications for growth and survival
Carbohydrate-based cell walls show up all over the tree of life, including in several multicellular lineages. In this talk, we will explore how cell walls are central to the growth and survival of organisms in two groups: plants and brown algae (seaweeds).