John M. McDowell | |
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| Occupation | Academic, research scientist, phytopathologist  |
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John M. McDowell is the J.B. Stroobants Professor of Biotechnology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His major area of research is phytopathology and plant-pathogen interactions. [1] He has used gene-sequencing technology to examine the genome of Phytophthora capsici [2] and to develop strains of soybean plants that are better able to defend against pathogens. [3]
McDowell received his B.A. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Tennessee (1987). He received his Ph.D. in genetics, from the University of Georgia (1995). [1]
McDowell was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Jeffery Dangl at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1995-1999. [1]
McDowell joined the Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 2000. [1] In 2017, he was named the J.B. Stroobants Professor of Biotechnology at Virginia Tech. [4] As of 2018, he became a Professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Virginia Tech. [1] He has served as associate scientific director at the Fralin Life Science Institute at Virginia Tech. [5]
McDowell is a strong advocate for Congressional funding of scientific research, emphasizing its importance to farmers and food production and its impact on the U.S. economy. [3] [6]
McDowell has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals. [7] [8] He has been editor-in-chief of Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions [9] (2016-2018). [1] He joined the Annual Review of Phytopathology in 2019, [1] and became the journal's co-lead editor with Gwyn A. Beattie in 2022. [10]
McDowell studies fundamental biological principles underlying plants' susceptibility to disease, and their defense mechanisms against pathogens. His work is relevant to the development of crops with the ability to resist pathogens and increase yield. [4] For example, McDowell has studied the genome of a pathogen that kills soybeans, the second most planted crop in the U.S.. and used that information to develop strains of soybean plants that are better able to defend against the pathogen. [3] He has worked with David Haak and others on the development of gene-sequencing technology and the examination of the complex genome of Phytophthora capsici . P. capsici attacks plants including soybeans, tomatoes, and lavender. [2]
Plant pathology or phytopathology is the scientific study of plant diseases caused by pathogens and environmental conditions. Plant pathology involves the study of pathogen identification, disease etiology, disease cycles, economic impact, plant disease epidemiology, plant disease resistance, how plant diseases affect humans and animals, pathosystem genetics, and management of plant diseases.
Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete or water mold, a fungus-like microorganism that causes the serious potato and tomato disease known as late blight or potato blight. Early blight, caused by Alternaria solani, is also often called "potato blight". Late blight was a major culprit in the 1840s European, the 1845–1852 Irish, and the 1846 Highland potato famines. The organism can also infect some other members of the Solanaceae. The pathogen is favored by moist, cool environments: sporulation is optimal at 12–18 °C (54–64 °F) in water-saturated or nearly saturated environments, and zoospore production is favored at temperatures below 15 °C (59 °F). Lesion growth rates are typically optimal at a slightly warmer temperature range of 20 to 24 °C.
Phytoplasmas are obligate intracellular parasites of plant phloem tissue and of the insect vectors that are involved in their plant-to-plant transmission. Phytoplasmas were discovered in 1967 by Japanese scientists who termed them mycoplasma-like organisms. Since their discovery, phytoplasmas have resisted all attempts at in vitro culture in any cell-free medium; routine cultivation in an artificial medium thus remains a major challenge. Phytoplasmas are characterized by the lack of a cell wall, a pleiomorphic or filamentous shape, a diameter normally less than 1 μm, and a very small genome.
Pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) are small molecular motifs conserved within a class of microbes, but not present in the host. They are recognized by toll-like receptors (TLRs) and other pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) in both plants and animals. This allows the innate immune system to recognize pathogens and thus, protect the host from infection.
Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) play a crucial role in the proper function of the innate immune system. PRRs are germline-encoded host sensors, which detect molecules typical for the pathogens. They are proteins expressed mainly by cells of the innate immune system, such as dendritic cells, macrophages, monocytes, neutrophils, as well as by epithelial cells, to identify two classes of molecules: pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), which are associated with microbial pathogens, and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), which are associated with components of host's cells that are released during cell damage or death. They are also called primitive pattern recognition receptors because they evolved before other parts of the immune system, particularly before adaptive immunity. PRRs also mediate the initiation of antigen-specific adaptive immune response and release of inflammatory cytokines.
Jonathan Dallas George Jones is a senior scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory and a professor at the University of East Anglia using molecular and genetic approaches to study disease resistance in plants.
The Pathogen-Host Interactions database (PHI-base) is a biological database that contains manually curated information on genes experimentally proven to affect the outcome of pathogen-host interactions. The database has been maintained by researchers at Rothamsted Research and external collaborators since 2005. PHI-base has been part of the UK node of ELIXIR, the European life-science infrastructure for biological information, since 2016.
Hypersensitive response (HR) is a mechanism used by plants to prevent the spread of infection by microbial pathogens. HR is characterized by the rapid death of cells in the local region surrounding an infection and it serves to restrict the growth and spread of pathogens to other parts of the plant. It is analogous to the innate immune system found in animals, and commonly precedes a slower systemic response, which ultimately leads to systemic acquired resistance (SAR). HR can be observed in the vast majority of plant species and is induced by a wide range of plant pathogens such as oomycetes, viruses, fungi and even insects.
The gene-for-gene relationship is a concept in plant pathology that plants and their diseases each have single genes that interact with each other during an infection. It was proposed by Harold Henry Flor who was working with rust (Melampsora lini) of flax (Linum usitatissimum). Flor showed that the inheritance of both resistance in the host and parasite ability to cause disease is controlled by pairs of matching genes. One is a plant gene called the resistance (R) gene. The other is a parasite gene called the avirulence (Avr) gene. Plants producing a specific R gene product are resistant towards a pathogen that produces the corresponding Avr gene product. Gene-for-gene relationships are a widespread and very important aspect of plant disease resistance. Another example can be seen with Lactuca serriola versus Bremia lactucae.
Pseudomonas syringae is a rod-shaped, Gram-negative bacterium with polar flagella. As a plant pathogen, it can infect a wide range of species, and exists as over 50 different pathovars, all of which are available to researchers from international culture collections such as the NCPPB, ICMP, and others.
Phytophthora capsici is an oomycete plant pathogen that causes blight and fruit rot of peppers and other important commercial crops. It was first described by L. Leonian at the New Mexico State University Agricultural Experiment Station in Las Cruces in 1922 on a crop of chili peppers. In 1967, a study by M. M. Satour and E. E. Butler found 45 species of cultivated plants and weeds susceptible to P. capsici In Greek, Phytophthora capsici means "plant destroyer of capsicums". P. capsici has a wide range of hosts including members of the families Solanaceae and Cucurbitaceae as well as Fabaceae.
Jeffery Lee Dangl is an American biologist. He is currently John N. Couch Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Resistance genes (R-Genes) are genes in plant genomes that convey plant disease resistance against pathogens by producing R proteins. The main class of R-genes consist of a nucleotide binding domain (NB) and a leucine rich repeat (LRR) domain(s) and are often referred to as (NB-LRR) R-genes or NLRs. Generally, the NB domain binds either ATP/ADP or GTP/GDP. The LRR domain is often involved in protein-protein interactions as well as ligand binding. NB-LRR R-genes can be further subdivided into toll interleukin 1 receptor (TIR-NB-LRR) and coiled-coil (CC-NB-LRR).
Plant disease resistance protects plants from pathogens in two ways: by pre-formed structures and chemicals, and by infection-induced responses of the immune system. Relative to a susceptible plant, disease resistance is the reduction of pathogen growth on or in the plant, while the term disease tolerance describes plants that exhibit little disease damage despite substantial pathogen levels. Disease outcome is determined by the three-way interaction of the pathogen, the plant and the environmental conditions.
Glyceollins are a family of prenylated pterocarpans found in ineffective types of nodule in soybean in response to symbiotic infection.
Niklaus J. Grünwald is a biologist and plant pathologist born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela of German and Swiss ancestry. He is currently a research scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, a Professor (Courtesy) in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University, and a Professor (Adjunct) in the Department of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology at Cornell University.
Effector-triggered immunity (ETI) is one of the pathways, along with the pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) pathway, by which the innate immune system recognises pathogenic organisms and elicits a protective immune response. ETI is elicited when an effector protein secreted by a pathogen into the host cell is successfully recognised by the host. Alternatively, effector-triggered susceptibility (ETS) can occur if an effector protein can block the immune response triggered by pattern recognition receptors (PRR) and evade immunity, allowing the pathogen to propagate in the host.
Guard theory is a branch of immunology which concerns the innate sensing of stereotypical consequences of a virulence factor or pathogen. This is in contrast to the classical understanding of recognition by the innate immune system, which involves recognition of distinct microbial structures- pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs)- with pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). Some of these stereotypical consequences of virulence factors and pathogens may include altered endosomal trafficking and changes in the cytoskeleton. These recognition mechanisms would work to complement classical pattern recognition mechanisms.
Fungal effectors are proteins or non-proteinaceous molecules secreted by pathogenic fungi into a host organism in order to modulate the host's immune response.
Gwyn A. Beattie is the Robert Earle Buchanan Distinguished Professor of Bacteriology for Research and Nomenclature at Iowa State University, working in the areas of plant pathology and microbiology. Beattie uses molecular and cellular perspectives to examine questions about the ecology of plant bacteria such as the ways in which plant leaves respond to environmental cues, and the genomics underlying microbial responses on and within plant leaves. Her work on the microbiome and the positive influence of microbes has implications for plant health and productivity, with the potential to improve crop yields and counter food insecurity.
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