PMB165 Plant-Microbe Interactions
From coffee to bananas to grapes to potatoes, many plants are threatened by disease. Current methods to fight disease include dousing crops with pesticides, but is there a better way to produce food safely while protecting our health and the environment? This course will explore the microbes that cause devastating crop losses and how natural plant defenses can be harnessed to combat diseases without the use of chemicals.
Plant-microbe encounters can be friendly or hostile. Soil contains beneficial mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia, which associate with roots and provide plants with mineral nutrients and fixed nitrogen in exchange for carbon. But plants are also constantly exposed to a range of fungal, bacterial and viral pathogens, and have evolved unique defense mechanisms to fight these infections.
This course will cover topics in molecular plant-microbe interactions ranging from how microbes cause disease to how plants defend themselves. A second goal of the course is to engage students in state-of-the-art research in the area of plant-microbe interactions.
Come learn about the amazing world of plant-microbe interactions at a course taught by three experts in the field who are also excellent teachers:
- Profs. Jennifer Lewis and Barbara Baker of the Plant Gene Expression Center
- Prof. Shauna Somerville, Energy Biosciences Institute
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