Developing immune receptor-based constructs for plant disease resistance engineering
Ksenia Krasileva, Professor
Plant and Microbial Biology
Closed. This professor is continuing with Spring 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Fall 2024.
Plant diseases pose a significant threat to global agricultural crop production. Developing genetically modified plants with boosted disease resistance offers an economical and environmental solution. Plant immune receptors are naturally evolved resistance determinants that recognize target pathogen molecules to initiate defense responses. They have been widely used as transgenes. However, most immune receptors only target specific strains of pathogens and the resulted resistance can be broken down by the rapid adaption of pathogens. As an alternative to using natural immune receptors as transgenes, mounting plants with constitutively active immune receptors can greatly extend the range of target pathogens but usually lead to compromised growth of the plants. To overcome the mentioned limitations, this project will deploy the principles of synthetic biology to develop an immune receptor-based construct that can both confer broad spectrum resistance and maintain the balance between plant immunity and growth.
Role: The main role of the student is to generate and test different synthetic constructs for disease resistance. The detailed process includes gene cloning, Agrobacterium-mediated transient gene expression and disease resistance assay. At the same time, the student will assist in screening transgenic tomato plants for desired genotypes. Once the students learned the techniques, he/she will perform the screening independently. With this project, the student will become expert at fundamental molecular biology experiments such as PCR, plasmid extraction, transformation, and more advanced techniques such as Golden Gate cloning. The students can also learn how to deal with microbes including E. coli, Agrobacterium, Pseudomonas spp. and Phytophthora spp. Last but not the least, the student will learn about how amazing synthetic biology is for improving crop disease resistance.
Qualifications: We are looking for students with a good understanding of genetics and molecular biology. Students with prior lab research or lab course experience in molecular biology will be preferred, but not required. The student should be highly motivated, patient with troubleshooting and willing to work independently but not afraid to ask many questions. The student is expected to dedicate about 12 hours a week to the project, including meetings with the mentor. Undergraduate student is also expected to attend lab meetings weekly and make a 15min research progress presentation on the lab meeting at the end of the semester.
The student should schedule 1:1 meetings with Prof. Krasileva at least monthly and are encouraged to have additional ad hoc meetings in person or by Zoom to discuss career development and research project.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Wei Wei, Post-Doc
Hours: 12 or more hours
Related website: https://krasilevalab.org/
Biological & Health Sciences