Does resistance to pathogens make plants less fit?
Lead Supervisor: Dr Adnane Nemri Associates: Dr Peter Thrall Inducible defences are very reliable mechanisms that plants turn to when they sense pathogens in their environment. It is an unresolved question in biology why hosts do not continuously protect from all possible attacks by leaving their defences on and accumulating resistance genes in their genome. Flax rust is a pathogenic fungus of cultivated and wild flax species. Its cell wall is composed of chitin polymers that have been shown to be recognized by receptor proteins in some plants, e.g. rice and Arabidopsis, but also in animals. We are interested in finding out whether flax species also have this ability. The project will aim at developing a physiology assay to elicit plant defence responses. The work will involve plant physiology, and molecular biology including DNA work and analysis of plant gene expression. The development of this assay will be useful to study how plants react to the perception of invaders and how it im
