Small Boosts to the Plant Immune System Yield Dramatic Results

Roger Innes

Indiana University Bloomington

Academic Position

Professor, Biology
Indiana University
1991 - current

Education

Postdoc in Biology 1991
University of California, Berkeley

Ph.D. in Biology 1988
University of Colorado

B.A. in Biology 1982
Humboldt State University

How to Contribute

Your contributions will support the continued research of Dr. Roger Innes, of Indiana University, as he creates sustainable methods to increase crop yields. Your donations of $200K per year will support a research project. Funding Dr. Innes' research, which is focused on developing plants that are resistant to pathogens, will allow you to play a part in protecting our planet, while increasing crop production to meet the needs of our growing population.

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Enabling plants to fight off disease

Since 1970 the human population has nearly doubled, growing from 3.7 billion to 7.3 billion, and is projected to surpass 10 billion in 2061. Making matters worse, increasing wealth in developing countries such as India and China is leading to increased meat consumption, which requires an even greater increase in grain production. This combination of population growth and increased consumption of meat means that we need to double our grain production by 2050. If we cannot dramatically increase crop yields, the world faces widespread famine, which will trigger massive civil unrest. Dr. Roger Innes, of Indiana University, researches the molecular mechanisms that plants use to fight off disease in order to develop crop plants that are immune to economically important diseases. Such immunity can dramatically increase crop yields and in addition, would reduce the use of environmentally damaging pesticides. With the need to increase crop yields in a sustainable manner being one of the most pressing issues of our time, Dr. Innes' research would provide for a much less environmentally damaging agricultural system in addition to an innovative solution!

Since 1988, Dr. Innes has made great progress towards understanding the basic molecular mechanisms that plants use to detect pathogens. He and his team are now applying this knowledge to develop crop plants that are resistant to specific diseases. In fact, Dr. Innes' laboratory was the first to establish a system by which the disease resistance capacity of an individual plant could be easily expanded by making very minor changes to existing genes. In the future, he and his team hope to apply their findings to crop plants outside of the laboratory. This technology has the potential to make large impacts in current crop production methods, particularly when applied to diseases that are currently controlled only by the use of pesticides such as potato late blight (the cause of the Irish potato famine). In short, Dr. Innes' research is critical to combat the incredible need for increasing crop yields while providing a more environmentally friendly route.

Dr. Innes conducts a number of research projects. Some of his current projects include:

Small Changes: Dr. Innes' research aims to make small changes to genes that have large impacts. Making small changes to existing plant genes allows the plant to recognize a larger range of pathogens, and in a more durable manner, and thus can grow free of diseases. Such healthy plants produce dramatically larger yields. In addition, farmers will be able to prevent the spread of disease without the use of harmful pesticides.
Plant Signaling: Dr. Innes focuses on the ability for plants to recognize pathogens. In particular, he and his team were among the first to identify intracellular receptors in plants that are capable of detecting the presence of proteins injected by pathogens. When these intracellular receptors detect specific pathogen proteins they activate a strong defense response that ultimately leads to the death of the plant cell, but in so doing, stops the pathogen from growing. He and his team can therefore engineer plants that are resistant to pathogens to which they were previously susceptible. This research also sheds light upon human biology as the plant and human immune systems share striking similarities.

Bio

Since the 4th grade, Dr. Innes has considered himself an "environmentalist," meaning that he loves being outdoors in natural areas and truly cares about preserving the environment. This was motivated in part by growing up in Southern California at the peak of its air pollution problems (i.e., prior to the invention of catalytic converters for automobiles) and seeing firsthand how humans were destroying the world in which we were living. Dr. Innes was 11 years old, in 1970, when the first Earth Day event occurred. Somehow, even at that young age, that event made a big impact on him and has guided his career decisions since. When he commenced his college education, he enrolled at Humboldt State University partly because of its pristine location in Northern California's redwood country, and partly because of its top-rated wildlife management program. At Humboldt, Dr. Innes became excited by the new insights that molecular biology was providing into how life works, and thus changed his major to Biology, with an emphasis in genetics and molecular biology.

He then pursued a Ph.D. program in which he could research at a molecular level, interactions between organisms, and in particular, between microbes and plants, with a long-term goal of developing agricultural systems that were less damaging to the environment. This led him to his Ph.D. research on rhizobium bacteria, which form symbioses with the roots of legumes, where they convert atmospheric nitrogen to a form that plants can use (ammonia). This natural symbiosis enables legumes to grow in nitrogen poor soils without the addition of nitrogen fertilizers. Unfortunately major crops such as corn, wheat and rice cannot form such symbioses, thus huge amounts of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, derived from petrochemicals, are dumped on our farmlands annually, leading to major water pollution problems. By researching the rhizobium-legume symbiosis as a graduate student Dr. Innes hoped to someday contribute to the development of similar symbioses in all crop plants, and thus reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers.

While Dr. Innes was pursuing his Ph.D. research, crop yields became an important topic for him as the environmental movement had begun to focus on the fundamental issue of population growth and how unchecked population growth was causing widespread environmental degradation, largely as a result of slash and burn agriculture. It became abundantly clear to him in the mid-1980s that we needed to develop a more sustainable agricultural system if we were to have any hope of feeding the world's growing population while preserving the environment. For his postdoctoral work, he thus switched from a research focus on bacteria (rhizobia) to a focus on plant molecular biology, with a long-term goal of developing crop plants that produced high yields in a sustainable manner, meaning low inputs of pesticides and fertilizers.

Consistent with his fourth grade passions, Dr. Innes spends most of his free time hiking, camping, and backpacking. This last summer, he spent two weeks walking through the Highlands of Scotland. In addition, he enjoys cycling and running through the hilly forest lands surrounding Indiana University.

Website: http://sites.bio.indiana.edu/~inneslab/index.html