This InterView with Seogchan Kang, Professor of Plant Pathology at Penn State, was conducted by Hao-Xun Chang, a 2016 IS-MPMI student travel awardee, who is currently a post-doc at Michigan State University.

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Hao-Xun Chang (HXC): Thank you very much for accepting my invitation, and let me congratulate you on being a Fellow of The American Phytopathological Society.

My first question is, Why did you choose to pursue an academic position in the U.S.?

Seogchan Kang (SK): Most of my college classmates in the chemistry department at Seoul National University came to the U.S. for their PhDs. It was like an unwritten requirement for us to follow. Since many of those several years senior to us became professors in Korea or in the U.S., I naively thought that I would also get a faculty position somewhere after earning my PhD. So, you can guess how badly I planned for my professional development! For example, I never tried to get teaching experience during my PhD. That experience was one of the reasons I developed a course in my department entitled Professional Development and Ethics. I want to help graduate students avoid career pitfalls and poor planning.

HXC: What resources did you rely on to establish your own research program?

SK: The most important resources were my mentors. Having their help played a big role in getting my current position, and they also served as role models. My PhD advisor, Bob Metzenberg at UW–Madison, helped me think very broadly by frequently bringing up his “crazy ideas” for lab discussion. They were about how to experimentally approach many unsolved problems in science. Barbara Valent at DuPont, my first post-doc supervisor, introduced me to plant pathology and showed me that good science cannot be rushed. John Hamer at Purdue, another post-doc advisor, had a knack for pitching even mundane data and ideas as if they were major breakthroughs. My colleagues and collaborators were also resources. I never took formal courses in plant pathology. Although I read many plant pathology-related papers in my work on rice blast disease at DuPont and Purdue, I don’t think I could have passed the departmental candidacy exam during the first few years in my job. Several “real” plant pathologists in the department generously shared their experiences and materials, which enabled me to study interesting problems without making too many silly mistakes. I also owe thanks to several long-time collaborators for allowing me to pursue major ventures. I have worked closely with one of them, Yong-Hwan Lee at Seoul National University, for 20 years.

HXC: What was your first research grant, and what can you share about getting it?

SK: It was a grant from USDA-NRI, a program that became USDA-AFRI. The proposal was about studying the genetic mechanism underpinning race variation in Magnaporthe oryzae, and it was based, in part, on a proposal I submitted to the same program when I was a post-doc. Although the first proposal was not chosen for support, the experience and the feedback from reviewers greatly helped me improve the next proposal. A call I received from the panel manager made me very happy!

HXC: What advice do you have for post-docs and graduate students who want to write competitive research and fellowship proposals?

SK: Given my recent batting record, I’m not sure if I can offer good advice! However, based on what I have learned from reviewing proposals from highly successful scientists, I can offer a few tips. Given the extremely competitive funding environment, your proposal should excite reviewers and must stand out among many good proposals. A good proposal can take several different forms. Examples include making an inquiry that will likely disrupt a major paradigm, building an essential community resource that is urgently needed, and controlling an emerging disease of global concern. Try to help reviewers help you. The 10% success rate does not mean that you have some chance of getting support if you submit 10 proposals. Poorly prepared proposals, no matter how many of them you submit, will not likely bring good outcomes. If you do not feel ready to submit a solid proposal by yourself, explore the possibility of participating in a collaborative project as a co-PI. (Of course, you should have something valuable to add to the project!) Collaborative projects also offer some valuable lessons that will help your professional growth. If you can solve important problems for local commodity groups, they may give you some funding. In some states, such commodity support can be as big as a federal grant. Although funding is critical, I should note that your curiosity, not the funding availability, should determine what you want to work on.

HXC: What is your ideal composition of laboratory personnel (post-docs, grad students, undergrads, technicians, etc.), and is this balance important?

SK: I do not think that there is a magic formula for composition. However, taking excellent people is essential for many reasons. Even though I have made a number of bad hiring decisions, I have survived and managed to explore several interesting projects, thanks to a few excellent students and post-docs. Collaborators that provided human resources and expertise that I did not have certainly helped, too. Recruiting the right people is especially critical for a new faculty, as you cannot spend as much time as you did as a post-doc in the lab and have to depend increasingly on others for research outputs. Considering how overinflated recommendation letters can be, you may consider recruiting people through someone you can trust. Anyone can walk on water during the coldest month of the year in Michigan. What you need to figure out is whether a person can do it in July!

HXC: Thank you very much, Dr. Kang. Do you have any other suggestions for post-docs who want to get faculty positions?

SK: Critically analyze your weaknesses and strengths early, so you can judiciously use the strengths to advance your career while eliminating the weaknesses or learning to minimize the damage they cause. Build and grow a network of supporters and collaborators. As I emphasized earlier, they can help you in many ways. Stay curious, so that you can frequently venture into exciting frontiers of science. An academic position is one of the very few jobs that pays you for doing what you enjoy.

HXC: Thank you very much.

Editor’s note: Below is a response to the article in the last issue on imposter syndrome, which was written by Michelle Marks and Katelyn Butler. This response was written by IS-MPMI Interactions Advisory Board member Dr. Dan Klessig. As you will learn from his response, imposter syndrome can affect anyone, regardless of his or her career achievements. I encourage you to continue the discussion of this topic by sharing comments after the original article or after this one. (You must log in to see and submit comments.) Or perhaps talk among yourselves in the lab, at a department seminar, or over a drink after hours. Thanks again to Michelle and Katelyn for initiating the conversation.

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By Dr. Dan Klessig, Boyce Thompson Institute and Member of the Interactions Advisory Board

Facilities are available at the conference center in Glasgow, Scotland, for groups that want to hold satellite meetings in association with the congress. Contact John Jones, co‑organizer, for more details.

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This InterView with Angela Sessitsch, head of the Competence Unit at the Austrian Institute of Technology, was conducted by Bruna Gonçalves Coutinho, a post-doc at the University of Washington. If you are interested in completing your own InterView, please contact Interactions Editor-in-Chief Dennis Halterman.

Bruna Gonçalves Coutinho (BGC): You have been studying plant–bacteria interactions for a long time now. Why did you choose this as your research topic? Of your many contributions to the field, which is the one you are most proud of?

Angela Sessitsch (AS): I did my PhD on Rhizobium–legume interactions and was fascinated with how microorganisms can contribute tremendously to plant nutrition. At that time, I also got to know Johanna Döbereiner from Brazil, and she indeed had a vision on microbial contributions to agriculture. For example, she found that nitrogen fixation by endophytes in sugarcane was a great economic contribution to bioethanol production in Brazil. Thereby, endophytes contributed to a great bioethanol program in that country. At that time, I got more and more interested in plant–microbe interactions beyond Rhizobium.

I am not sure what has been the greatest contribution of my career, but already about 15 years ago, we showed that endophytes are active inside the plant and that microbial (endophytic) communities respond to plant physiology and plant stress. This was at a time when even plant microbiologists did not believe in the existence or importance of bacterial endophytes. We also did the first metagenomic analysis of root endophytes, which was not only an advance to our understanding of endophyte functioning but also a tremendous technical challenge, as it was before the use of next-generation sequencing and we had to remove plant-derived DNA as efficiently as possible. More recently, my team discovered a way to integrate bacterial inoculant strains into seeds, which has opened a completely novel way to modulate microbiomes and has great value for commercial applications.

BGC: We have been seeing an explosion of research on bioinoculants. Several companies and academic labs are working on the discovery and formulation of microorganisms that can replace or act together with chemical fertilizers to boost crop production. However, this is not a new field of research. What do you think has changed in the field that has allowed for this renewed interest in the subject?

AS: Well, it is not new, but it was a niche market, except for Rhizobium inoculants. A few years ago, plant scientists became aware that plants—like humans and other animals—host a diverse microbiota, which is crucial for health, nutrition, and stress resilience. This made a huge difference, as before, plant scientists and plant breeders completely ignored the existence of plant microbiota. This increasing awareness of the existence and the potential of microorganisms, as well as the fact that many chemicals are being taken away from the market, has led to big expectations from the plant microbiome. Further drivers are climate change and massive yield losses due to drought, which may be alleviated by microorganisms but not by chemicals, as well as demographic development, which requires yield increases.

BGC: Your lab and several others have used metagenomics to contribute to a broadened culture-independent view of plant microbiome and their activities. How can the scientific community leverage the power of metagenomics to develop targeted microbial-based products?

AS: This is an interesting and challenging question. I believe that metagenomics allows us to obtain structural information on the communities associated with the plant and that learning the ecology of microbiomes may lead to a better understanding of which strains can better establish in a certain habitat or in association with a specific plant. Metagenomics may lead us in isolation campaigns in order to obtain better inoculant strains or reveal markers indicating beneficial interactions.

BGC: What are the biggest challenges we face in order to move this technology forward?

AS: There are a couple of challenges. For instance, we all agree that field success has to improve. There are a couple of issues to consider in that aspect, such as the development of suitable formulations or application approaches. But the ecology and competitive ability of strains have to be considered, as well. Generally, we have to move from trial and error to discovery- and application-based understanding.

BGC: Microbial-based products are yet to be widely adopted in agriculture, but preliminary research suggests a clear potential for application globally. One challenge facing the industry is avoiding negative public perceptions, such as those previously experienced by biotech crop industries. How do you think scientists can help in this aspect?

AS: Communication is an important aspect. The question is, who is responsible for it and who is best suited to do it? Companies, in their own interest, should be active in communication with the public sector to avoid negative public perception. It will also be important to involve the academic sector and to provide resources to allow scientists to be involved in stakeholder engagement. Ideally, specialized staff should be hired for communication tasks, and they should involve scientists, as well as other stakeholders, in a dialogue.

Most of us spend the majority of our time in the lab or office, but I know that some members are passionate about moving our newly found technologies into the field to improve crop production and provide food security throughout the world. To this end, I would like to highlight projects associated with IS-MPMI members that demonstrate translations of basic biology into applied products. IS-MPMI member Nicolas Champouret and I are currently serving on the technical advisory board for a USAID project to introduce late blight-resistant potato to Indonesia and Bangladesh using GM technology. Following is a summary of the work that’s being done on this project. I think it’s a great representation of how our science can impact society. If you have projects related to the translation of basic biology to the field and would like to highlight them in Interactions, please let me know.

The environmental impact, gender-balance contribution, and socioeconomic impact of GM products produced through this project will be carefully monitored and assessed. Overall, the project will contribute to these five goals: (1) to reduce malnutrition and improve health; (2) to reduce the use of harmful pesticides; (3) to reduce pre- and postharvest losses; (4) to improve the social and economic standing of women; and (5) to catalyze economic growth.

Feed the Future, the U.S. initiative to combat global hunger and poverty, is founded on the belief that global hunger is solvable. By partnering for innovation and creating greater global food security through innovative research in agriculture, Feed the Future is fighting hunger with science and technology. To learn more, visit www.canr.msu.edu/biotechpp or www.feedthefuture.gov.

Figure: Late Blight US23 Confined Field Trial: Michigan State University 2017

Fig. 1. Results of the confined field trial concluded that the three R-gene late blight-resistant potato (C) showed strong resistance to strain US23, whereas the single R-gene events (B) suffered heavy damage and the nontransgenic plants (A) completely succumbed to the disease.

​Authors of journal articles generally aim to educate an audience made up of people already in their field. But what can researchers do to inspire new scientists—particularly kids? That’s where Frontiers for Young Minds comes in. Frontiers for Young Minds publishes journals with articles written by experts and then edited by kids, for kids.

Under the guidance of science mentors, young people between the ages of 8 and 15 review articles and advise the authors on how to make the materials more accessible to members of young age groups. Frontiers for Young Minds not only involves young people directly in the scientific process, but it also produces resources that can be used for instruction, enrichment, and informal learning.

Authors can submit one of two types of articles. Core Concept articles explain fundamental ideas from a given field and synthesize them for younger audiences. New Discovery articles take existing journal articles and translate them into language that younger audiences can comprehend.

Expose young people to the work you do in molecular plant-microbe interactions by getting involved with Frontiers for Young Minds! Visit Frontiers for Young Minds online, and check out the author guidelines. If you have any questions, contact Frontiers for Young Minds or Dennis Halterman.

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 Job Openings

• • Faculty Cluster Hire, Boyce Thompson Institute

  •   Tenure System Faculty Position in Plant Resilience, Michigan State University

Two years have passed since the highly successful and scientifically stimulating XVII International Congress on Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions in Portland in 2016, and it is almost 1 more year to go until IS-MPMI XVIII convenes in Glasgow, Scotland, on July 14–18, 2019. This long period makes you wonder what IS-MPMI and the board of directors have been doing since 2016.

This year’s efforts of the board of directors have been largely devoted to organizing the 2019 congress in Glasgow together with the local organizers, Paul Birch and John Jones, and the local

organizing committee, representing all areas of IS-MPMI in the UK. We have decided in several sessions on the plenary speakers and the chairs of concurrent sessions. The goal has been to generate a mix of established and junior speakers with broad international representation and a good gender balance. Looking at the program, I think we have largely achieved this. It has also been very rewarding to hear that almost without exception, all the invited scientists have agreed to speak. I am also very happy to let you know that the financial situation of our society is such that we will be able to grant travel support to more junior scientists to attend the 2019 congress in Glasgow. The website to apply for this funding will open in early 2019.​

When I took over the presidency from Sheng Yang He in Portland, it was time to restructure the IS-MPMI Interactions platform—our forum to communicate with you. I felt that we should not miss out on the immense expertise of outstanding members of our society who have recently retired. It’s my great pleasure to report that Fred Ausubel, Paola Bonfante, Alan Colmer, Allan Downie, and Dan Klessig readily agreed to my inquiry and will from now on form a team of senior advisors for Interactions that the editor-in-chief can turn to for advice. Brad Day stepped down as editor-in-chief of Interactions, and Dennis Halterman enthusiastically took over the position and is breaking new ground by soliciting participation in particular of our younger members, who among other things have chosen eminent scientists for interviews. I still see room for improvement, i.e., more participation of our members. It would be great if you would tell us the topics you would like to see printed and discussed so that we can focus our efforts on content that matters to our members, in particular the junior members, to keep them excited about science and engaged in our society.

IS-MPMI is a truly international society, and we currently have about 1,000 members from 43 countries. I would be very happy to see more participation by members from all countries with respect to engagement in our society. IS-MPMI is an open society, and views and suggestions from all members are welcome. We would like to communicate with our members, and we appreciate your suggestions on how best to accomplish this goal, especially career advancement for our young members. We desire to foster a strong sense of community.

MPMI, the dedicated journal of our society, has been running smoothly under the expert guidance of John McDowell as editor-in-chief. John has made substantial efforts, together with his editorial team, to increase the visibility of MPMI during difficult times, in which more and more journals are launched and compete for papers. His 3-year term will end in December 2018, and we are happy to announce that Jeanne Harris will take over then. Let me take the opportunity to thank John for all of his time and effort devoted to MPMI. Let me also take the opportunity to thank members of the board of directors for their extremely valuable input during the many calls and for their willingness to take on responsibility for IS-MPMI affairs and advancing the functioning of our society. And a big thank-you to the staff for keeping our input into the daily affairs of the society to a minimum.

With respect to our science, I sense that times are changing: Model systems will certainly continue to be of enormous value by elucidating the basic mechanisms of how microbes interact with plants. When I attended my first IS-MPMI meeting in Interlaken in 1990, I was incredibly proud to be allowed to talk about a system that seemed odd at the time but since has become a model for biotrophic fungal–plant interactions. I find it truly rewarding that it has survived and flourished for three decades and continues to deliver unprecedented and exciting insights. Such models are important and will continue to be so. However, with the advent of new technologies, even difficult-to-handle systems of considerable importance in agriculture are becoming tractable. We should return to these: obligate and emerging pathogens, obligate symbionts, and the transplantation of entire systems, such as nitrogen fixation, into crop plants.

As I write this letter, I am on vacation in my summerhouse at the Baltic Sea. It is one of the driest summers on record, and it is horrifying to see plants getting weak first due to the drought and then succumbing to pathogens. Watching this happen not just in your own garden but also in the neighboring fields tells you that the importance of our work will grow if we want to solve worldwide problems of crop production under changing climate conditions. We need to improve plant productivity and contribute to a sustainable agriculture. The engineering of broad-spectrum and durable resistance continues to be one of the big future challenges. The availability of genome information of the most important crop species, together with modern genome engineering techniques, is expected to spur new initiatives in this direction. Another hurdle I see is that most of our results are obtained and validated in controlled laboratory settings. In most cases, we do not know to what extent traits we have introduced will work out under field conditions, where plants may be exposed not to one but to several threats simultaneously or in succession and/or to slowly changing environments, involving several factors. In this regard, it is shocking that in July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that gene-edited crops should be subject to the same regulations that are applied to conventional genetically modified organisms—even if they do not contain transgenes. This is a severe blow to the more translational research in our field in all of Europe. I can only hope that those of you who are affected by this ruling will not give up your fight against it.

I will end with a personal note: In one of his letters to you, Sheng Yang He, previous president of our society, voiced that he feels unsatisfied to witness young group leaders struggle to find a new niche and he suggested several solutions. I agree with him that this continues to be a problem. But I see an even deeper problem developing in science in general: Doing science may lose some of its attraction. For me throughout my scientific career, doing science, i.e., solving a scientific problem that you have picked yourself, has been immense fun and highly rewarding. I see this at stake not while you work on solving the problem but when you try to publish it. Our publishing culture, in my view, has eroded to a point that it becomes increasingly impossible to publish exciting new findings quickly, because you are asked to add more and more detail during several rounds of revision, which delays publication to an unacceptable length. Let me make clear that I am not talking about missing controls and/or flaws in the data but about an almost deliberate delay by the reviewers—who are our colleagues. I am afraid that such experiences will seriously damage the interest in basic research and may turn away our most promising young PhDs and post-docs from pursuing a scientific career. We will pick up this discussion with the board of directors and the IS-MPMI community to meet this challenge and develop an effective strategy, because the future also of our scientific field critically depends on the young scientists and their excitement, engagement, and fun in doing science and tackling the unknown.

I am very much looking forward to seeing many of you in Glasgow next year.

Best wishes,

Regine Kahmann, President

Pierre de Wit receives the Jakob Eriksson Prize. From left to right: Mauritz Ramstedt, Chair of the Jakob Eriksson Commission; Pierre de Wit; Ulla Gjörstrup, representative of the Swedish Consul in Boston.

What area(s) of molecular plant–microbe interactions do you feel your research has impacted most?

As an MSc student at Wageningen University in the 1970s, I was intrigued by lectures on the gene-for-gene hypothesis proposed in the 1940s by Professor Oort in the Netherlands for wheat and Ustilago tritici and by Harold Flor in the U.S.A. for flax and Melampsora lini. I was fortunate to be offered a PhD position and having the freedom to choose my own research subject. I ended up studying the interaction between tomato and Cladosporium fulvum. I witnessed different episodes in the research on gene-for-gene systems. At the third ICPP in Munich in 1978—the first international congress that I attended—research was focused on elicitors and their capacity to more quickly induce phytoalexins in incompatible interactions than in compatible ones. My role models at that congress were Noël Keen, Peter Albersheim, and Joseph Kuć. Their research inspired me to carry on in times when I did not make much progress in my own research. Phytoalexins have now become popular as health-enhancing phytochemicals (such as resveratrol, glyceollin, polyphenols, etc.). I was surprised to read an article recently that the tomato phytoalexin falcarindiol, which we discovered in tomato in 1981, is also a potential drug, inhibiting human cancer cell lines. In addition to phytoalexins, we studied the role of antifungal pathogenesis-related proteins, including chitinases and β-1,3-glucanases in incompatible interactions. However, the breakthrough came when we started to study apoplastic fluids from tomato leaves infected by C. fulvum, which appeared to contain many proteinaceous elicitors—the products of fungal avirulence (Avr) genes recognized by cognate Cf receptor-like proteins in tomato. Then, very soon, the specificity question was solved. In the absence of cognate Cf-proteins, race-specific elicitors (now called “effectors”) suppress defense responses induced by nonspecific (glyco) protein fungal elicitors (now called “pathogen-associated molecular patterns,” or PAMPs), and in the presence of cognate Cf proteins, they induce a Cf-mediated defense response. With a very enthusiastic group of MSc students, PhD students, and post-docs, we have cloned many C. fulvum effectors, and for some of them, the structure and function have been elucidated. Many of the PhD students and post-docs now occupy prestigious academic positions, and I see the Jakob Eriksson Prize also as a recognition of their contributions to my research.

What advice do you have for young scientists aspiring to achieve the level of science that has major impact?

There is no guidebook that leads to success in science. Everybody stands on the shoulders of other scientists who have pioneered and partly paved roads in different research directions. There are still many fundamental and applied research questions in plant–microbe interactions that need to be addressed and solved in order to get more sustainable agriculture. I grew up on a farm and was motivated to find alternatives for the use of pesticides after reading the book Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson in 1962. I still strongly believe in the power of disease resistance breeding in sustainable agriculture together with healthy soils and biocontrol agents when no resistance genes are available. The genomics era opens new ways to address and solve difficult research questions. However, to become successful in science, talent is not enough; ambition, curiosity, inspiration, loving your work, endurance, and not being afraid of working hard and making mistakes are equally important. However, it is also important to get sufficient time to develop a new research line after your PhD, which is not easy, as tenure positions are becoming rare in many countries.

When you were a post-doc, what had the largest influence on your decision to enter your specific research area in your permanent position? Was this a “hot topic” at the time, or did you choose to go in a different direction?

I was very fortunate to obtain a permanent position already during my PhD, as I was hired to assist in teaching and work on my PhD project. This gave me more time to develop my PhD project than a regular PhD student. If I had been allowed to work on my PhD project for only 4 years, I would never have discovered the race-specific elicitors of C. fulvum and their encoding genes. After my PhD, I received a Fulbright Fellowship to work 1 year in the U.S.A. in the laboratory of Professor Joseph Kuć at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, which allowed me to continue my research project and interact with researchers working on induced systemic resistance against pathogens in different crops. At that time, research on gene-for-gene interactions was a hot topic, as well as research on local and systemic resistance, and they still are.