Savithramma P. Dinesh-Kumar

Biosketch

Savithramma P. Dinesh-Kumar is Professor and Chair of the Department of Plant Biology and Professor of the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis. He earned his BSc and MSc in Plant Breeding and Genetics from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India. He obtained his PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from Iowa State University under the guidance of Professor Allen Miller. He was a postdoctoral fellow in plant immunity at Plant Gene Expression Center and University of California, Berkeley in the lab of Professor Barbara Baker. He joined Yale University as a faculty in 1999 and joined University of California, Davis as a Professor in 2010. He served as an Associate Editor (2014-2023) and currently serves as a Section Editor of PLOS Pathogens, senior editor of Phytopathology Research, and on the editorial boards of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Plant Communications, and Stress Biology. He was recognized with a Junior Faculty Fellowship, Hellman Family Fellowship, Distinguished Faculty Research Award from the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, and the Noel Keen Award for excellence in Molecular Plant Pathology from the American Phytopathological Society. Dinesh-Kumar is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Research Interests

Dr. Dinesh-Kumar’s major research interest is to understand the molecular basis of host-microbe interactions. Dinesh-Kumar’s research findings have unveiled intricate mechanisms of plant immunity to viruses and some important technological advances. His ongoing research focuses on dissection of nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immune receptor-mediated signaling events leading to defense against pathogen infections. In addition, how autophagy, a conserved central cellular process contributes to immunity and pathogenesis. His group is also investigating how chloroplasts communicate and coordinate with other organelles during innate immunity. This new line of research stemmed from Dinesh-Kumar and colleagues work demonstrating that chloroplast stroma-filled tubular extensions known as “stromules” that were observed a century ago play an important role in immunity by forming complex associations with the nucleus, promote perinuclear clustering of chloroplasts and as a conduit to transport defense proteins and molecules. Dinesh-Kumar’s ongoing research seeks to identify players involved in stromule biogenesis and inter-organellar communication and their mechanistic role in immune signaling. Dinesh-Kumar group is also engineering plant viral vectors for transgene-free delivery of gene editing components into plants that holds promise for modifying plant genomes without the need for genetic transformation and plant regeneration for better traits and disease resistance.