Assistant Professor
- Ph.D., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, (1995-2002)
- B.A., Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, (1991-1995)
- Plant Pathology
- Post-doctoral Researcher, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC (2002-2006)
- Generally speaking, my scientific interests have always been to understand the intricate and sometimes quite complex nature of interactions between plants and fungal plant pathogens. Why do plants succumb to disease? And how do certain fungi take advantage of a plant’s "inner-workings" to grow and reproduce? Specifically, there are two projects going on in my lab: the first focuses on the molecular interactions between a devastating fungal pathogen of rice, barley and other cereal crops, called Magnaporthe oryzae. The second is on a fungal-like organism that is of economic interest to lima bean breeders and farmers in Delaware, and is a close relative of the pathogen that caused the Irish Potato Famine. This fungal-like parasite called Phytophthora phaseoli can, under the proper conditions, destroy up to half of the lima bean yield in one season. We study the transcriptional and translational regulation of genes that may play critical roles in the interactions between these destructive pathogens and their hosts.
- American Phytopathological Society (APS)
- APS Member: Office of Public Relations and Outreach (OPRO)
- Manuscript reviewer for Molecular Plant Microbe Interactions and Molecular Plant Pathology
Oh, Y., Donofrio, NM., Pan, H., Coughlan, S., Brown, DE., Mitchell, TK. and Dean, RA. 2008. Transcriptome analysis reveals new insight into appressorium formation and function in the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. Genome Biology 9, R85.
Meng, Y., Patel, G., Heist, M., Betts, FM., Tucker, SL., Galadima, N., Donofrio, NM., Brown, D., Mitchell, TK. Li, L., Xu, J-R., Orbach, MJ., Thon, M., Dean, RA., and Farman, ML. 2007. A systematic analysis of T-DNA insertion events in Magnaporthe oryzae. Fungal Genetics and Biology 44, 1050-1064.
Betts, FM., Tucker, SL., Galadima, N., Meng, Y., Patel, G., Li, L., Donofrio, NM., Floyd, A., Nolin, S., Brown, D., Mandel, MA., Mitchell, TK., Xu, J-R., Dean, RA., Farman ML., and Orbach, MJ. 2007. Development of a High Throughput Transformation System for Insertional Mutagenesis in Magnaporthe oryzae. Fungal Genetics and Biology 44, 1035-1049.
Donofrio, NM., Oh, Y., Lundy, R., Pan, H., Jeong, JS., Coughlan, S., Mitchell, TK. and Dean, RA. 2006. Global gene expression during nitrogen starvation in the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe grisea. Fungal Genetics and Biology 43, 605-617.
Dean, R., Mitchell, T., Donofrio, N., Jeong, JS. and Powell, A. 2005. Fungal biology reaps the benefit of genomics. Genome Biology 6, 336-337.
Dean, RA., Talbot, NJ., Ebbole, DJ., Farman, ML., Mitchell, TK., Orbach, MJ., Thon, M., Kulkarni, R., Xu, J-R., Pan, H., Read, ND., Lee, Y-H., Carbone, I., Brown, D., Oh, YY., Donofrio, NM., Jeong, J-S., Soanes, DM., Djonovic, S., Kolomiets, W., Rehmeyer, C., Li, W., Harding, M., Kim, S., Lebrun, M-H., Bohnert, H., Coughlan, S., Butler, J., Calvo, S., Ma, L-J., Nicol, R., Purcell, S., Nusbaum, C., Galagan, JE., Birren, BW. 2005. The genome sequence of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea. Nature 434, 980-986.
Donofrio, NM., Rajagopalon, R., Brown, D., Diener, S., Windham, D., Nolin, S., Floyd, A., Mitchell, T., Galadima, N., Tucker, S., Orbach, M., Patel, G., Farman, M., Pampanwar, V., Soderlund, C., Lee, Y-H., and Dean, RA. 2005. ‘PACLIMS’: A component LIM system for high-throughput functional genomic analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 6:94-101.
Contact Information:
Plant and Soil Sciences
University of Delaware
152 Townsend Hall
Newark, DE 19716
Phone: (302) 831-2531
e-mail: ndonof@UDel.Edu