Jason Rudd

Jason is a molecular plant pathologist with expertise in biochemical, molecular and genome analysis of plants and fungi. He is currently a project leader in the wheat pathogenomics team studying Zymoseptoria tritici. Previously, he researched both the mechanisms preventing self-fertilisation in flowering plants and the responses of plant cells to recognition of fungal elicitors. His interests lie in defining the molecular components that underpin fungal pathogen virulence and plant defence responses in cereal crops. His research retains a particular emphasis on the regulation and mechanisms of cell-cell communication. It focuses on using genomics approaches to identify and characterise Z. tritici secreted protein effector candidates, and to dissect the key molecular components of fungal virulence using fungal genome re-sequencing and high throughput mutagenesis approaches. These methods, combined with transformation technologies for validating gene functions, are revealing many new aspects of fungal virulence and of novel genes essential for key developmental responses essential for causing plant disease.