Miaoying Tian
University of Georgia, GA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Phytophthora palmivora is a fungus-like microbe that attacks many important crops and wild plants. These include cacao, the tree whose beans are the main ingredient of chocolate.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
- Topics
Phytophthora palmivora
oomycete
plant pathogen
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Determine how the effector PpalRxLR1 causes disease on cacao by mapping its molecular interactions in the plant cell nucleus and identifying the host processes it disrupts during infection.
- Test whether PpalRxLR1, which is present in some P. palmivora isolates and absent from others, helps determine host range by analyzing its evolution across the species and its link to the plants each isolate infects.
- Identify additional effectors that P. palmivora needs to infect specific hosts or a broad range of plants, using natural variation among isolates of the pathogen.
More about the research
Diseases it causes cost cacao growers at least one billion US dollars a year. It can infect almost any part of a plant, and frequent fungicide spraying controls it only poorly. The project's long-term goal is to find environmentally friendly ways to control the pathogen by learning how it causes disease and why it infects some plant species but not others.
Why it matters
P. palmivora threatens cacao and the chocolate industry, along with many other crops and natural ecosystems, and fungicides control it poorly. Identifying its key infection proteins and what decides its host range could lay the groundwork for more effective, environmentally friendly disease control. This could support food security and growers of affected crops.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Clemencia Rojas
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Plant Science & Agriculture
Identify the genes and biosynthetic pathways in Pseudomonas protegens PBL3 that produce antimicrobials against Burkholderia glumae, using genetics and comparative genomics.
Jesse Lasky
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Profile the diversity of trans-species microRNAs, small RNAs that dodder sends into host plants, across Cuscuta populations, and identify their host mRNA targets using small RNA sequencing and host transcriptome assemblies.
Liana Burghardt
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Identify which legume host traits support which rhizobial bacteria by analyzing plant characteristics and field samples from legumes, using traditional and AI-enabled image and statistical analysis.
The school
University of Georgia: 27 labs on PI Pages, $628M a year on research, 598 research doctorates a year.
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