October 2025 AMS virtual seminar: Dr. Yi Ding, on fungal plant pathogens!

We invite you to attend our upcoming AMS virtual seminar. This month, we're excited to feature Dr. Yi Ding, a Lecturer and a Research Fellow in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney.

Tackling complex plant-fungal interactions to enhance crop production and health

Dr. Yi Ding

Plant Breeding Institute

School of Life and Environmental Sciences

The University of Sydney

Thursday, 30 October 2025

12pm (AEST) / 2pm (NZST) 

Register here

Summary

Plant-fungal interactions encompass a dynamic spectrum from mutualistic symbiosis to pathogenic invasion. Understanding how plants establish and adapt to these opposing lifestyles is central to improving crop health and productivity. Among these interactions, rust pathogens represent some of the most destructive fungal diseases of cereal crops, posing persistent threats to global food security. Through integration of functional genomics and molecular genetics, current studies aim to investigate genome evolution and effector-receptor interactions within cereal-rust pathosystems. High-quality haplotype-resolved assemblies of multiple rust isolates have revealed extensive structural variation, including genome rearrangements and evidence of somatic hybridization that contribute to virulence diversification. Parallel analyses of cereal hosts using targeted mutagenesis, resistance mapping, and comparative genomics have identified novel, non-canonical forms of resistance that expand the known repertoire of host immune signaling components. Together, these studies define new models of rust pathogen evolution and host recognition, offering molecular insight into the dynamic coevolution of cereal-rust interactions.

About Dr. Yi Ding

Dr Yi Ding is a Lecturer and Research Fellow in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. He completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, Germany, where he investigated the molecular basis of endophytic symbiosis in Arabidopsis and barley. Following a USDA postdoctoral fellowship at the Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University, he expanded his work to nutrient signaling and transportation in arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. Before joining the University of Sydney in 2019, Yi was a Research Scientist at CSIRO, leading projects on plant immunity and fungal signal perception in Fusarium-cereal interactions. His current research integrates plant genetics and functional genomics to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying cereal rust resistance and pathogen virulence evolution.