Plant immunity

微生物病原体引起的植物病害是全球作物生产的主要威胁，每年造成10-16%的产量损失，并影响食品质量。随着人口激增和气候变化对农业的影响越来越具有挑战性，对可持续农业的需求从未像现在这样重要。更好地了解植物如何与微生物病原体相互作用并开启防御反应，以及病原体如何在恶劣环境中生存并在其宿主植物中引起疾病，对现代作物保护至关重要。这些知识将有助于我们设计更好的战略，控制作物病原体引起的流行病，并在很大程度上支持可持续农业。拟开展的研究将解决两个主要问题：(1)植物如何通过免疫受体激活病原体识别后的免疫反应？(2)恶名昭彰的土传病原菌菌核菌（Sclerotinia sclerotiorum）是如何在土壤中形成生存结构，并在不同宿主中引发灾难性疾病的？更好地了解这些问题将有助于更有效地控制农田中的持久性病原体。分子遗传学、基因组学、代谢组学、生物化学和细胞生物学的多学科方法将被应用于剖析植物寄主和病原体的信号事件。拟议的项目建立在以前的研究成功和初步结果的基础上。它们将导致发现宿主防御和病原体发展和毒力的新调节因子。他们还将揭示这些调节因子如何在信号转导过程中发挥生物化学作用的机制。这些机制的发现将为提高寄主免疫力提供新的分子途径，并为真菌病原体控制提供特异性靶点，从而为作物保护提供更多资源。此外，通过跨学科和多学科的培训，下一代植物/真菌生物学家将获得多样化的技能。这些学员将能够整合现代生物学研究工具，以帮助解决我们这个时代最紧迫的问题之一：以可持续的方式养活不断增长的全球人口。

Plant diseases caused by microbial pathogens are major threats to global crop production, causing an annual loss of 10-16% in yields and impacting food quality. As the human population sky-rockets and the impacts of climate change on agriculture are increasingly challenging, the need for sustainable agriculture has never been more important. A better understanding of how plants interact with microbial pathogens and turn on defense responses, and how pathogens survive in harsh environments and cause diseases in their host plants is critical for modern crop protection. This knowledge will help us design better strategies for controlling epidemics caused by crop pathogens and support sustainable agriculture in a major way.The proposed research will address two main questions: (1) How do plants activate immune responses upon pathogen recognition through immune receptors? (2) How does the notorious soilborne pathogen, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, form its survival structure in soil and cause catastrophic diseases in diverse hosts? Better understanding of these questions will allow more effective control of persistent pathogens in crop fields. Multidisciplinary methods in molecular genetics, genomics, metabolomics, biochemistry and cell biology will be applied to dissect the signaling events in plant hosts and the pathogen. The proposed projects build on previous research success and preliminary results. They will lead to discoveries of new regulators of host defense and pathogen development and virulence. They will also reveal the mechanisms of how these regulators function biochemically during signal transduction. These mechanistic findings will identify novel molecular ways to improve host immunity, and specific targets for fungal pathogen control, thus providing more resources for crop protection. In addition, through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary training, next-generation plant/fungal biologists will be educated with diverse skillsets. These trainees will be able to integrate modern biological research tools to help solve one of the most urgent problems of our time: feeding the increasing global population in a sustainable manner.