The Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology's weekly Plant Pathology 250 seminar series is presented this week by Dr. Ksenia Krasileva from UC Berkeley.

Seminar Title: “Chasing the Red Queen: How Plants Evolve to Keep Up with Pathogens”

Ksenia Krasileva is an interdisciplinary scientist who studies plant genomics and immunity. She holds a BS and PhD from UC Berkeley where she studied plant-microbe interactions and was trained in genomic and computational biology. She did her postdoctoral studies in wheat genomics at UC Davis where she was supported by a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture postdoctoral fellowship to lead the development of wheat exome capture and wheat functional genomics. Krasileva started her own group four years ago at Norwich Research Park in the United Kingdom at Earlham Institute and the Sainsbury Laboratory where she led her research before moving to Berkeley this year. For her contributions to wheat genomics, Krasileva received the Carlotta Award and has served as the principal investigator on several major grants. Currently, she maintains her research interests in the biology of plant genomes, the evolution of plant innate immunity, and functional analyses of plant immune receptors. Research in her lab combines bioinformatics, molecular biology, and field studies to understand and improve plant disease resistance.

Seminar Host: Dr. Wenbo Ma; wenbo.ma@ucr.edu