Dr Thorsten Langner

I am intrigued by fungal plant pathogens and the mechanisms they use in order to infect their host plants.

To overcome plant immunity these pathogens deploy effector proteins, which get translocated into the host’s apolast or cytoplasm where they “reprogram” the plant or suppress immune responses. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of effector trafficking, function as well as adaptation to new hosts is what drives me forward.

In the current project I focus on effector protein adaptation and specialization in interactions of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae with different host grasses after a host jump.

Publications

Bialas A, Zess EK, De la Concepcion JC, Franceschetti M, Pennington HG, Yoshida K, Upson JL, Chanclud E, Wu C-H, Langner T, Maqbool A, Varden FA, Derevnina L, Belhaj K, Fujisaki K, Saitoh H, Terauchi R, Banfield MJ, Kamoun S (2017)

Lessons in effector and NLR biology of plant-microbe systems. bioRxiv preprint Aug 2, 2017 doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/171223

Langner T, Göhre V (2015)

Fungal chitinases: function, regulation, and potential roles in plant/pathogen interactions. Curr Genet. 2015 doi: 10.1007/s00294-015-0530-x

Langner T, Öztürk M, Hartmann S, Cord-Landwehr S, Moerschbacher B, Walton JD, Göhre V (2015)

Chitinases are essential for cell separation in Ustilago maydis. Eukaryot Cell. 14(9):846-57. doi: 10.1128/EC.00022-15.

Job History

2015 – 2015 Postdoctoral Researcher, Heinrich-Heine University, Duessledorf, Germany

2011 – 2015 PhD Student, Heinrich-Heine University, Duessledorf, Germany

2013 – 2013 PhD Student (research stay), Michigan State University, East Lansing; US

2010 – 2011 Internship, Novartis, Basel, Switzerland

2009 – 2010 Diploma Thesis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany