Molecular Plant Pathology

Having enjoyed my time in the plant pathology department at OSU and then learning some molecular techniques at Dstl's microbiology department I was keen to put these new skills into practice when it came to my final year dissertation project at Nottingham. I joined Dr Matthew Dickinson's molecular microbiology lab in the school of Biosciences at Nottingham's Sutton Bonington campus. I worked closely with graduate student Jennifer Hodgetts on a project looking at the sequences of the SecA gene in the bacterial plant pathogens, the phytoplasmas. This project involved the PCR amplification of SecA genes from several different candidata phytoplasma and also the design and optimisation of new primers for this purpose. Upon successful amplification of the SecA gene it was cloned into E.coli for propagation and subsequent purification and sequencing. The SecA gene sequences obtained were analysed to establish the phylogenetic relationships between the SecA genes and to see how these relationships compared with the existing classification system of the phytoplasmas.

View the abstract and discussion here: Phylogenetic Analysis of the SecA gene in Phytoplasmas