Research Director

Outline

Obligate biotrophic pathogens secrete effector molecules that modulate host physiology. The change of host cell environments allows the pathogens to keep exploiting nutrition from the living host. To break the vicious cycle of arms race between host plants and obligate biotrophic pathogens, I propose a new concept “strengthening disease resistance by disturbance of persistent infections. This concept is clearly distinct from the conventional approach by improving disease resistance at the early infection stage. Based on this concept, my research goal is to build a new system for designing wheat cultivars that are robust against climate change and evolution of obligate biotrophic pathogens. I aim to isolate biomarkers required to complete this system.