How does the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea regulate its virulence mechanisms and can we use network re-wiring for plant immunity?

We study the economically important fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea which infects a broad range of fruit and vegetable crops, as well as the model plant Arabidopsis. We are interested in the complex molecular events in the pathogen and the host plant, how these are regulated and how the interaction of these determines the severity of disease. Understanding this will open up new sustainable crop disease control strategies, helping reduce reliance on chemical methods.

In our lab we combine experimental and computational biology and have used large-scale transcriptome data and computational modelling to generate gene network models regulating host immunity and pathogen virulence. These networks predict important transcriptional regulators of pathogen virulence which we will investigate in this project using RNAi gene silencing strategies, focusing on the importance of these regulators during infection of different host plants. As part of their attack strategy, pathogens manipulate the host plant immune response (via small RNA which can silence specific genes). In this project, we will first identify how the pathogen manipulates and evades host immunity during infection. Second, we will use our knowledge of host gene networks to ask whether we can overcome this manipulation through synthetic biology - re-wiring of the plant gene networks, changing how vital immunity genes are controlled.

This PhD project will allow candidate to develop skills in plant and pathogen growth, pathogen infection assays, genotyping, transcriptomics, molecular biology, generation and characterisation of transgenic Arabidopsis, network analysis and bioinformatics. It will suit someone with an interest in molecular plant disease resistance, plant-pathogen interaction, synthetic biology, bioinformatics, and sustainable crop production.