Unnati Sonawala
Postdoctoral research associate
Research group: Crop pathogen immunity
Biography
I am broadly interested in plant-microbe interactions, genetics, and evolution. After completing my MSc in Food Security from the University of Warwick, I worked on my PhD at Virginia Tech (USA) wherein I studied how oomycete plant pathogens acquire nitrogen from their host using the model pathosystem of Arabidopsis and its downy mildew pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis. I am now using genomics to study a hyper-variable effector family in the potato cyst nematode Globodera pallida to further understand their function and how they contribute to nematode parasitism.
Publications
Publication
A low-cost and open-source solution to automate imaging and analysis of cyst nematode infection assays for Arabidopsis thaliana
Date: 12 December 2022
Contributors: Olaf Prosper Kranse, Itsuhiro Ko, Roberta Healey, Unnati Sonawala, Siyuan Wei, Beatrice Senatori, Francesco De Batté, Ji Zhou & Sebastian Eves-van den Akker
Journal: Plant methods
Publication
The genome and lifestage-specific transcriptomes of a plant-parasitic nematode and its host reveal susceptibility genes involved in trans-kingdom synthesis of vitamin B5
Date: 19 October 2022
Contributors: Shahid Siddique, Zoran S. Radakovic, Clarissa Hiltl, Clement Pellegrin, Thomas J. Baum, Helen Beasley, Andrew F. Bent, Oliver Chitambo, Divykriti Chopra, Etienne G. J. Danchin, Eric Grenier, Samer S. Habash, M. Shamim Hasan, Johannes Helder, Tarek Hewezi, Julia Holbein, Martijn Holterman, Sławomir Janakowski, Georgios D. Koutsovoulos, Olaf P. Kranse, Jose L. Lozano-Torres, Tom R. Maier, Rick E. Masonbrink, Badou Mendy, Esther Riemer, Mirosław Sobczak, Unnati Sonawala, Mark G. Sterken, Peter Thorpe, Joris J. M. van Steenbrugge, Nageena Zahid, Florian Grundler & Sebastian Eves-van den Akker
Journal: Nature Communications
Publication
Increased expression of UMAMIT amino acid transporters results in activation of salicylic acid dependent stress response
Date: 26 January 2021
Contributors: Besnard, J., Sonawala, U., Maharjan, B., Collakova, E., Finlayson, S. A., Pilot, G., Okumoto, S.
Journal: Frontiers in Plant Science
Publication
Functional linkages between amino acid transporters and plant responses to pathogens
Date: 29 September 2019
Contributors: Sonawala, U., Dinkeloo, K., Danna, C. H., McDowell, J. M., Pilot, G
Journal: Plant Science
Publication
UMAMIT14 is an amino acid exporter involved in phloem unloading in Arabidopsis roots
Date: 17 November 2016
Contributors: Besnard, J., Pratelli, R., Zhao, C., Sonawala, U., Collakova, E., Pilot, G., Okumoto, S
Journal: Journal of Experimental Botany
