Department of Botany and Plant Pathology

Research Interests

Plant pathology; Molecular mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis and plant disease resistance;  Inter-kingdom chemical signaling between bacteria and plants; Pseudomonas syringae; Arabidopsis; Signal transduction; Proteomics

• My laboratory is working to understand the complex signaling events that occur between pathogenic bacteria and plants during infection. A major goal of our research is to understand how bacteria use plant-derived metabolites as chemical cues to deploy virulence factors such as the type III secretion system at the onset of infection. We are also investigating plant signaling pathways that are rapidly activated upon pathogen detection, with the goal of identifying elements of the plant immune response that provide effective resistance against bacterial pathogens. Our work focuses primarily on the model Pseudomonas syringae-Arabidopsis pathosystem, and we use a combination of genetics, functional genomics, metabolite analyses and proteomics to investigate responses in both pathogen and host.

Research Group Members 

PhD Candidates

• Megan O’Malley

• Conner Rogan

Faculty Research Assistant

• Yin-Yuin Pang