Dr Mike Deeks

About me:

I am a cell biologist with an interest in cell polarity; specifically the way plant cells respond to spatial information to guide their immune responses.

The cells of complex plants have an acute awareness of the events occurring immediately beyond their walls and make spatially precise responses to any perceived threat. Potentially pathogenic microbes cause plant defences to focus within a few square microns of the plant cell surface. This process can be summarised as 'pathogen-oriented cell polarisation'. The response is effective against most microbes but successful pathogens evade these counter-measures to establish infection.

My group aims to understand how multiple cell processes are co-ordinated as a system to achieve this important response that underpins the plant immune system.

Our research aims to understand the response of plant cells to localised pathogen assault. Changes in cell architecture support the plant immune system and an understanding of this response could potentially be exploited to protect key crops.

We are investigating the mechanisms co-ordinating this spatially focused phenomenon using advanced light microscopy combined with a broad range of molecular, genetic and biochemical techniques. We are particularly interested in how the plant-pathogen interface emerges from the co-ordination of several processes:

• Microbe perception
• Cytoskeletal re-arrangement
• Long-range cargo transport
• Exocytosis (cargo delivery)
• Endocytosis (cargo recovery)

We are developing bioimage informatics and modelling approaches to better understand the relationships between these different players in both model plants and key cereals.

1998 - 2001University of Leeds. PhD Genetics.
1995 - 1998University of Leeds. B.Sc. Hons. Genetics.

7/98 - 9/98 Research Assistant, John Innes Institute, Norwich.
10/01 - 6/13 Senior Research Associate/Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University.
7/13 - 10/17 Lecturer in Plant Biology, Biosciences, University of Exeter.
107/17 - Present Senior Lecturer, Biosciences, University of Exeter