Rate My Professor Sebastian Schornack

Schornack's research centers on microbe-induced host cell reprogramming mediated by effector proteins translocated into plant cells, encompassing plant pathogen effectors, disease resistance proteins, TAL effectors, and oomycete effectors such as Crinklers. His group explores interactions between plants and oomycetes like Phytophthora infestans and Phytophthora palmivora, as well as symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi, elucidating haustoria formation, effector trafficking, and manipulation of host gene expression. Notable contributions include co-discovering the DNA-binding code of TAL effectors, facilitating development of customized TAL activators and nucleases; identifying an ancient class of translocated oomycete effectors targeting the host nucleus (Schornack et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010); demonstrating that Phytophthora infestans effector AVRblb2 prevents focal secretion of a plant immune protease (Bozkurt et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011); and revealing a common signaling process promoting mycorrhizal and oomycete colonization of plants (Wang et al., Current Biology, 2012). Other key publications feature the genome sequence and analysis of Phytophthora infestans (Haas et al., Nature, 2009), Phytophthora palmivora establishing tissue-specific infection structures in early land plants (Carella et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018), and plant evolution driven by interactions with symbiotic and pathogenic microbes (Delaux and Schornack, Science, 2021). His work has profoundly shaped understanding of effector biology in plant-microbe interactions.