Boris A. Vinatzer

Assistant Professor 551 Latham Hall (0390) Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 Phone: (540) 231-2126 Fax: (540) 231-7477 E-Mail: vinatzer at vt.edu

Education| Awards| Research Interests| Experience| Peer-reviewed Publications| Reviewed Articles| Book Chapters

Education

• Ph.D., Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Italy (2000)
• B.S. and M.S., Agricultural Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy (1995)

Awards

• April 2008 NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award
• April 2005 Virginia Tech ASPIRES (A Support Program for Innovative Research Strategies) award
• July 2002 Postdoctoral Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH National Research Service Award
• July 1995 Graduation "cum laude" from the University of Bologna (Italy)

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Research Interests

The ability of organism to adapt to new niches becomes a primary concern to our society when it involves the specialization of pathogens to humans, farm animals, or crops. Little is known about how plant pathogens, which were adapted to natural mixed-plant communities in pre-agricultural times, evolved into today's highly aggressive pathogens of crops cultivated in monoculture. To fill this void, the Vinatzer lab aims at identifying the molecular evolutionary mechanisms that allow pathogens to specialize to specific plant species and to become more aggressive. The bacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (the cause of bacterial speck disease of tomato worldwide) and closely related bacteria, are the focus of our research. A multidisciplinary approach of comparative evolutionary genomics, population genetics, and microbial genetics is applied leveraging the latest advances in biological sciences and computer sciences. Research and education are integrated in the lab's activities through the development of an undergraduate course in "Microbial Genomics and Forensics" (to be offered starting in 2009) and the creation of internship opportunities for undergraduates in our lab and in the biotech industry. It is anticipated that our research will uncover genomic changes that occurred in P. syringae pv. tomato during its evolution since the advent of agriculture and that have led to its current aggressiveness and worldwide distribution. Results from this research are expected to constitute the basis for the development of new hypotheses on the evolution of bacterial pathogens in general and to be instrumental in future breeding and engineering of disease resistant crops. Easy access to obtained results will be provided through a web-accessible database to go online by the end of 2008.

Research in the Vinatzer lab is funded by the NSF.

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Experience

• Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 2004 - present
• Postdoctoral Research, Jean Greenberg Laboratory, Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, The University of Chicago, 2000-2004
• Graduate Research, Silviero Sansavini Laboratory, Department of Arboriculture, The University of Bologna, Italy, (1995-2000)
• Visiting Scientist at the David Lightfoot Laboratory, Department of Plant, Soil and General Agriculture, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (IL), Jan 1999 - July 1999
• Visiting Scientist at the Hong-Bin Zhang Laboratory, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Crop Biotechnology Center at Texas A&M University, College Station (TX), Aug 1998 - Dec 1998, Sep 1996 - Jan 1997
• Visiting Scientist at the Cesare Gessler Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Institute of Plant Sciences, Zurich (Switzerland), Jan 1998 - Jul 1998

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Peer-reviewed Publications

• Yan S, Liu H, Mohr TJ, Jenrette J, Chiodini R., Zaccardelli M, Setubal JC, Vinatzer BA. (in press) The Role of Recombination in the Evolution of The Model Plant Pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000, a Very Atypical Tomato Strain. Applied and Environmental Microbiology
• Mohr TJ, Liu H, Yan S, Morris CE, Castillo JA, Jelenska J, Vinatzer BA. (2008) Naturally Occurring Non-pathogenic Isolates of the Plant Pathogen Species Pseudomonas syringae Lack a Type III Secretion System and Effector Gene Orthologues. Journal of Bacteriology Published online ahead of print on 8 February 2008
• Morris CE, Sands DC, Vinatzer BA, Glaux C, Guilbaud C, Buffière A, Yan S, Dominguez H, Thompson BM (2008) The life history of the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae is linked to the water cycle. The ISME Journal 2:321-334
• Jelenska J, Yao N, Vinatzer BA, Wright CM, Brodsky JL, and Greenberg JT (2007) A J domain virulence effector of Pseudomonas syringae remodels host chloroplasts and suppresses defenses. Current Biology 17(6):499-508
• Vinatzer BA, Teitzel GM, Lee M-W, Jelenska J, Hotton S, Fairfax K, Jenrette J, and Greenberg JT (2006) The Type III effector repertoire of Pseudomonas syringae B728a and its role in survival and disease on host and non-host plants. Molecular Microbiology 62(1):26-44
• Vinatzer BA, Jelenska J, Greenberg JT (2005) Bioinformatics correctly identifies many type III secretion substrates in the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and the biocontrol isolate P. fluorescens SBW25. Mol Plant-Microbe Interact 18:877-888
• Vinatzer BA, Patocchi A, Gianfranceschi L, Tartarini S, Sansavini S, Cesare G. (2004) Isolation of two microsatellite markers from BAC clones of the Vf scab resistance region and their application in analyzing scab resistance in Malus accessions. Plant Breeding 123: 321-326
• Belfanti E, Silfverberg-Dilworth E, Barbieri M, Tartarini S, Patocchi A, Zhu J, Vinatzer BA, Gianfranceschi L, Gessler C, Sansavini S (2004) The HcrVf2 gene from a wild apple confers scab resistance to a transgenic cultivated variety. Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.101(3): 886-890
• Guttman DS*, Vinatzer BA*, Sarkar SF, Ranall, MV, Kettler G, Greenberg JT (2002) A functional screen for the Type III (Hrp) Secretome of the Plant Pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Science 295: 1722-1726 (*The first two authors contributed equally to this work)
• Vinatzer BA*, Patocchi A*, Tartarini S, Gianfranceschi L, Zhang H-B, Gessler C, Sansavini S (2001) Apple (Malus sp.) contains receptor-like genes homologous to the Cf resistance gene family of tomato with a cluster of such genes co-segregating with Vf apple scab resistance. Mol Plant-Microbe Interact 14(4): 508-515 (*The first two authors contributed equally to this work)
• Patocchi A*, Vinatzer BA*, Gianfranceschi L, Tartarini S, Zhang H-B, Sansavini S, Gessler C (1999) Construction of a 550 kb BAC contig spanning the genomic region containing the apple scab resistance gene Vf. Mol Gen Genet 262: 884-891 (*The first two authors contributed equally to this work)
• Vinatzer BA, Zhang H-B and Sansavini S (1998) Construction and characterization of a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Library of Apple. Theor Appl Genet 97: 1183-1190

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Review Articles

• Vinatzer BA, Yan S (2008) Mining the genomes of plant pathogenic bacteria: how not to drown in gigabases of sequence. Molecular Plant Pathology: 9 (1), 105-118
• Greenberg JT, Vinatzer BA (2003) Identifying type III effectors of plant pathogens and analysing their interaction with plant cells. Current Opinion in Microbiology 6: 20-28

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Book Chapters

• Vinatzer BA, Bull, CT (in press) The impact of genomic approaches on our understanding of diversity and taxonomy of plant pathogenic bacteria. In Plant Pathogenic Bacteria: Genomics and Molecular Biology, R.W. Jackson (Norwich, UK: Horizon Press)
• Vinatzer BA, Greenberg JT (2006) Whole-Genome Analysis to Identify Type III-Secreted Effectors. Methods in Molecular Biology 6354:19-34

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