Tolga Bozkurt

I initiated my career working on filamentous plant pathogens and focused on yellow rust-wheat pathosystem during my PhD in Turkey. My postdoctoral studies centered around the functions of Phytophthora infestans secreted effector proteins in the Sainsbury Laboratory. Following this, I am appointed a Lecturer position at the Imperial College London and I recently got promoted to Senior Lecturer position. My group mainly focuses on focuses on dissecting the molecular mechanisms underlying plant cell autonomous immunity and the role of endomembrane traffic in this process. I had ground-breaking contributions to the biology of plant-parasite interactions, especially on how pathogen effectors modulate membrane trafficking at the host interface. I was first to report that a plant pathogen effector focally accumulates at the host-pathogen interface and neutralizes a secreted host defense protease as a novel counter defense strategy. More recently, my work on effector biology shed light on the poorly understood question of how plant pathogens manipulate autophagy to enable infection. This work highlighted the extensive remodeling of endomembrane compartments during plant-microbe interactions and opened up novel perspectives in understanding the role of autophagy in plant immunity.