PMB Seminar Series Featuring Dr. Ksenia Krasileva, University of California, Berkley

"From natural diversity to rational modification of plant immune receptors"

Plants have a powerful immune system that relies on population level diversity of innate immune receptors. We have analyzed within species diversity of receptors in Arabidopsis, soybean and maize and uncovered that a subset of genes evolves rapidly though mutations at the ligand binding sites. We also show that such rapidly evolving subsets of receptors are marked by distinct genomic and epigenomic features. With advances in computational structural biology we can model receptors as well as their ligands and move towards rational modification of receptor specificities. We are developing transcription circuit approaches to better control synthetic alleles. Together, a combination of inter-species diversity analysis and synthetic biology provide new approaches towards rational disease control.   
 

Meet the Speaker

Dr. Ksenia Krasileva is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an interdisciplinary scientist who studies genomics and innate immune systems. Krasileva holds both BS and PhD degrees from Berkeley where she studied plant-microbe interactions and was trained in Genomic and Computational Biology. She did her post graduate work in wheat genomics at University of California Davis supported by USDA NIFA Postdoctoral Fellowship. Krasileva received the Carlotta award honoring women in working on wheat, Gordon and Betty Moore New Innovator award for her ideas in engineering immune receptors and NIH New Innovator award to pursue understanding innate immunity across kingdoms. Krasileva Lab at Berkeley maintains research interests in the biology of genomes, evolution and function of plant innate immunity.