Investigating fungal pathogen effector localisation within plant cells

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Ensuring global food security for the ever-growing world's population is a major concern. Fungal pathogensdestroy a substantial amount of all food crops each year (~15%). Cereal head blight diseases of wheat caused byvarious Fusarium fungi are particularly serious (Dean et al., 2012). These pathogens secrete effectorproteins that manipulate the host to promote infection. Some effectors were predicted to enter host organelles using software tools that search for sequence signaturesassociated with subcellular targeting. However, these prediction might not be accurate as only for a few fungaleffectors has their subcellular localisation been validated. Robust predictions are required to identify virulencechanges in the pathogen population associated with differences in effector host subcellular localisation. We will use multiple software tools to perform an in-silico meta-analytic prediction of the secretome of multipleFusarium graminearum strains and identify effectors likely to have host subcellular localisation before validating thesepredictions in the laboratory using in planta expression and confocal microscopy. Validated localisation data will beused to improve the accuracy of prediction tools. Then the plant protein targets from some effectors will beidentified by co-immunoprecipitation or proximity labelling followed by mass spectrometry. Plant targetsidentification will allow the elucidation of effector function(s). This new knowledge will permit the student and theadvisory team to devise new F. graminearum control strategies. The project is multidisciplinary with strong mathematical, computational biology and imaging components. The studentwill spend the first six months at Rothamsted Research (RRes) undertaking initial research training inbioinformatics, cloning techniques, bioimaging and specific taught courses. Subsequently, the student will transfer to theUniversity for a further research training period, before returning to RRes for the remainder of the PhD project. TheUniversity of Bath will be involved and will provide training in genomic approaches and analyses. The advisory teamincludes Drs Nutzmann (lead University supervisor) and Brown (2nd University supervisor) and at RRes Drs Darino, Smithand Urban and Prof. Hammond-Kosack (main supervisor). The student will have access to world class research facilitiesand will receive outstanding interdisciplinary training from their advisory team.