Antje Heese
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Plant Science & Agriculture
Plants cannot run from infection, so they rely on sensors on the surface of their cells to recognize that a microbe has arrived and to trigger defenses. Crop losses from plant pathogens matter directly for food supply: the world's population is projected to grow about 35% by 2050, and feeding it is expected to require roughly doubling crop production.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Biology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
maize
Zea mays
plant immunity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Test whether ZmFLS2, the maize version of the surface immune receptor that detects bacterial flagellin, is required for flg22 responses, using reverse genetics in maize and expressing ZmFLS2 in an Arabidopsis atfls2 mutant lacking its own receptor.
- Compare the signaling potency of different flg22 peptides, short fragments of bacterial flagellin, in maize leaves versus maize roots to define organ-specific immune sensitivity during early growth.
- Determine whether the maize ortholog of an Arabidopsis vesicular trafficking protein that moves FLS2 to and from the plasma membrane also functions in maize development and flagellin-triggered immune responses.
- Define the downstream immune outputs triggered by flg22 perception in maize that contribute to restricting growth of flagellated bacterial pathogens.
More about the research
This project focuses on maize, or corn, a staple worldwide and a major US crop, and asks how young maize plants detect bacterial invaders at the cell surface and turn on immunity.
Why it matters
Bacterial disease cuts maize yield and nutritional quality, and maize is both a major US crop and a staple food globally. Identifying the receptor and trafficking components that let maize cells detect bacterial flagellin could point to genes breeders or engineers use to build broader, more durable disease resistance, complementing current breeding. The project also trains undergraduates and a postdoctoral researcher in plant science.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Marisa Otegui
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Plant Science & Agriculture
Analyze how autophagy, the cell's self-digestion recycling system, affects recycling in different photosynthetic maize leaf cell types, using pooled cell-type proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.
Robert Schmitz
University of Georgia, GA·Genetics
Map accessible chromatin at single-cell resolution across multiple maize genetic backgrounds to identify cell-type-specific regulatory regions and transcription factor binding events.
John Fowler
Oregon State University, OR·Plant Science & Agriculture
Measure gene-specific contributions to pollen fitness for several hundred maize genes, using fluorescently marked Ds-GFP insertion mutants and the EarVision automated imaging and computer vision phenotyping system.
The school
University of Missouri-Columbia: 21 labs on PI Pages, $509M a year on research, 260 research doctorates a year.
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