Making sense of defence signalling networks in plants: how do plants prime their immune system to acquire long-lasting resistance against pests and diseases?

Supervisor: Dr Jurriaan Ton

Plants have evolved ingenious strategies to defend themselves against pests and diseases. The speed and intensity by which plants mobilise their defence arsenal upon attack determines the strength of their resistance. In addition to innate defence responses that are directly activated by incoming attack, plants can also prime their immune system to respond faster and stronger to future attacks. This heightened defence state is long-lasting, and is typically triggered by environmental signals that indicate upcoming stress, such as localised pathogen attack or wound-inducible odours from neighbouring plants. Hence, priming of defence can be regarded as immunological memory of plants.

Because defence priming boosts multi-genic horizontal resistance, it is more sustainable than vertical resistance, which is determined by single resistance genes. Critically, however, the signalling pathways mediating the onset of primed defence state remain elusive. The current PhD-project is designed to address this important gap in our understanding. The project is based on the discovery of putative receptor protein of a chemical priming agent, which can induce disease resistance in different plant species against a wide range of biotrophic and necrotrophic diseases. As such, this discovery provides a tractable system to study the early signalling events leading to broad-spectrum disease resistance in Arabidopsis and tomato. Using state-of-the-art techniques in the field of molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics, this multidisciplinary project will address the overarching question of how plants adjust their immune system in accordance to their environment.

Successful candidates should have a background in plant pathology, molecular biology or biochemistry (BSc or MSc). Applicants should send their CV and covering letter to Dr. Jurriaan Ton (j.ton@sheffield.ac.uk) and Dr. Estrella Luna (e.luna-diez@sheffield.ac.uk). All applicants should also complete an on-line application form, by going to the University web site at http://www.shef.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply and following the links. The call remains open until the position is filled.

This is a 4-year PhD studentship as part of a larger multidisciplinary research project that is funded by the European Research Council (ERC).