IAE Seminar Series: Benjamin Schwessinger via Zoom

A new era of plant pathogen genomics in rust fungi, from discoveries to applications

Speaker:
Dr Benjamin Schwessinger,
Group Leader, Schwessinger Group - Plants, fungi, evolution, ANU

Talk Description:

Rust fungi represent the largest single group of plant pathogens. These fungi are hugely important in agriculture and can threaten ecosystems as invasive biosecurity risks. The three wheat rust fungi are combined the major biotic limitation to wheat production and myrtle rust is threatening the Australian forest ecosystem.

Here I will present the latest insight into rust fungal genomics focusing on wheat rusts and myrtle rust. I will present how life-history traits influence genome biology, how nuclei swapping influence evolution of novel super virulent rust strains, and how transposable elements have shaped the massive genome expansion in myrtle rust. Lastly, I will present our resent progress translating these fundamental insights into direct sequence based diagnostic methods.

Biography:

Benjamin Schwessinger obtained his PhD from the University of East Anglia investigating receptor kinase mediate immune signalling in Arabidopsis. During is postdoc at UC Davis, he focused on immune signalling in rice while being supported by multiple independent fellowships. Benjamin moved to work on the genome biology and evolution of plant pathogenic rust fungi at the ANU, Canberra. For his move he was supported by an ARC DECRA to work with Prof John Rathjen. In 2018, Benjamin became fully independent with an ARC Future Fellowship and he is currently a Senior Lecturer at ANU. His team focuses on genome evolution and host adaptation of rust fungi in addition to other aspects of plant and fungal biology. http://teamschwessinger.com/.

Zoom details:

Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/2619370043

Meeting ID: 261 937 0043