DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evolutionary Dynamics of a Natural Plant-bacterial Pathogen Interaction

生态过程和遗传变异越来越多地被纳入植物与病原体相互作用的共进化模型，但将这一理论工作与自然系统联系起来的研究进展甚微。本研究将结合实验和观测数据，建立进化模型，研究细菌病原体绿黄假单胞菌与拟南芥相互作用的动力学特征。这将是仅有的几项自然植物-病原体相互作用的研究之一，也是第一次研究野生植物种群中细菌病原体的动力学。拟南芥一直是实验室研究植物对病原菌感染抗性的高效模型系统，并且越来越多的分子进化数据可用于拟南芥中赋予细菌病原菌抗性的基因。通过将拟南芥的抗病能力置于生态和进化的背景下，这项研究将有助于更好地理解最近的分子遗传学结果。通过这样的研究，更全面地了解植物群体抗性的进化动态和病原体群体的毒力，将是实现农作物持久抗病的必要步骤。

AbstractDISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evolutionary Dynamics of a Natural Plant-bacterial Pathogen InteractionBergelsonDEB-0309028Ecological processes and genetic variation are increasingly being integrated in coevolutionary models of plant-pathogen interactions, yet little progress has been made in relating this theoretical work to natural systems. This research will characterize the dynamics of the interaction between the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas viridiflava and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana by combining experimental and observational data with an evolutionary model. This will be one of only a few studies of natural plant-pathogen interactions and the first to study the dynamics of a bacterial pathogen in a wild plant population. A. thaliana has been a highly productive model system for studying plant resistance to pathogen infection in the laboratory and a growing amount of molecular evolutionary data is available for genes in A.thaliana that confer resistance to bacterial pathogens. By placing disease resistance in A. thaliana in an ecological and evolutionary context, this study will contribute to a greater understanding of recent molecular genetic results. A more complete understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of resistance in plant populations and virulence in pathogen populations, through studies such as this one, will be a necessary step towards the achievement of durable disease resistance in agricultural crops.