Eric Kemen
Visiting Worker
Contact details
Email: eric.kemen@sainsbury-laboratory.ac.uk
Research interests
Since new races of pathogens constantly emerge, new disease resistance (R) genes are needed for crop protection. One of the sources which has not been exploited so far is non-host resistance. In most cases pathogens fail on a non-host because their effectors have not been selected to evade recognition by the plant and thus trigger resistance. In order to make use of this kind of resistance it is important to know how pathogens evade recognition or how they suppress the defence reactions.
To identify these important suppressors, my goal is to sequence the genomes of three A. candida strains to make them available for computational analysis. The genomes will be assembled from short sequence reads generated by the Solexa technique which allows generating cheaper sequence data compared to other techniques. Since the Solexa technique was not used for de novo sequencing of eukaryotic genomes so far, my current interest is to establish this technique to make it available for de novo sequencing of different sizes of genomes (reaching from prokaryotic to eukaryotic ones).
Computational identified potential effectors will be cloned in Pseudomonas syringae strains with weak pathogenicity. Since these bacteria are able to deliver proteins via a Type III secretion system into the host cell they will be tested for enhanced virulence. P. syringae DC3000 strains carrying the identified effectors will be used to identify candidates for the corresponding R genes. These R genes will be a new chance for crop protection being unused today.
Selected Publications
Kemen E., Kemen AC, Rafiqi M, Hempel U, Mendgen K, Hahn M, Voegele RT (2005). Identification of a protein from rust fungi transferred from haustoria into infected plant cells. Mol Plant Microbe Interact 18(11): 1130-1139.
Kemen E., Hahn M, Mendgen K, Struck C (2005). Different resistance mechanisms of Medicago truncatula ecotypes against the rust fungus Uromyces striatus. Phytopathology 95(2): 153-157.
Wirsel SG, Runge-Frobose C, Ahren DG, Kemen E, Oliver RP, Mendgen KW (2002) Four or more species of Cladosporium sympatrically colonize Phragmites australis. Fungal Genet Biol 35(2): 99-113.
