Dr. Lawton has 30 years of experience working on plant:pathogen interactions, plant molecular biology and the application of plant biotechnology, including transgenic and CRISPR methods to enhance biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. In addition, he has worked on the moss Physcomitrella patens as a model system for studying cell death, stress responses and genome-wide chromatin structure. In collaboration with Dr. Rong Di and Dr. Jim Simon, he has used CRISPR-editing technology to modify sweet basil genes responsible for susceptibility to downy mildew susceptibility in basil, resulting in transgene-free, downy mildew-resistant sweet basil plants.
PUBLICATIONS
- Zhang, Y. C. Low, M. A. Lawton, J. E. Simon and R. Di. 2021. CRISPR-editing of sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) homoserine kinase gene for improved downy mildew disease 2 resistance. Frontiers in Genome Editing-Genome Editing in Plants 3:629769. DOI:10.3389/fgeed.2021.629769.
- Low, Y., A. Lawton and R. Di. 2020. Validation of barley 2OGO gene as a functional orthologue of Arabidopsis DMR6 gene in Fusarium head blight susceptibility. Sci. Reports. 10:9935. DOI:10.1038/s41598-020-67006-5.
- Di, R., A. Lawton and J. E. Simon. Filed on Mar. 27, 2020, Gene-edited basil plants resistant to downy mildew, PCT Patent Application No. PCT/US2021/024697
- Di, R., H. Zhang and A. Lawton. 2018. Cytotoxicity of deoxynivalenol in nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by RNAseq analysis. Toxins 10:262 doi:10.3390/toxins10070262
- Low, Y.-C., Lawton, M.A. and D., R. (Submitted and in review). Ethylene insensitive 2 (EIN2) as a potential target gene to enhance Fusarium head blight disease resistance