Dr Sebastian Fairhead

Postdoctoral Scientist
Jonathan Jones Group

I am interested in how agronomically important traits can be introgressed into crop varieties, in particularly durable disease resistance. My research focuses on the Albugo – Brassicaceae pathosystem.

Host defence is initiated through recognition of pathogen derived avirulence (AVR) effectors by the corresponding host resistance (R) gene. We are applying next generation sequencing to map multiple R genes from Arabidopsis thaliana for deployment in transgenic Brassica crops, whilst mapping complementary resistance in crop varieties to enable marker assisted selection.

We are also interested in how virulent pathotypes evade host recognition. An understanding of causal mutations in the AVR genes of natural populations may enable the identification, and pre-emptive deployment of the corresponding R genes.