Biography
Ari Sadanandom is a Professor of Plant Molecular Sciences at the University of Durham, UK. After gaining a PhD at the John Innes Centre for Plant Science Research and a postdoctoral position at The Sainsbury Laboratory for Plant Pathology in Norwich, Ari was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in 2003, and then as a senior lecturer at Warwick University in 2009. In 2011 Ari moved to the University of Durham where he is currently a Professor of Plant Molecular Sciences. Ari is also director of the Durham Centre for Crop Improvement Technology, a multidisciplinary research centre that works with the agriculture industry to develop technology that is effective in field conditions.
Ari's research group seeks to understand how protein modifications influence plant–environment interactions. The control of protein degradation through the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) is a central modifier of signalling in animals and plants. In recent years, another class of ubiquitin-related polypeptide tags called small ubiquitin-like modifiers (SUMO) has emerged as a very influential regulator of stress signalling in plants and animals. Nearly all crops are highly susceptible to drought, heat stress, and salinity. Ari's and his group's work on post-translational modification of proteins has shown that specific signalling proteins are SUMOylated as part of plant survival strategy during pathogen invasion and high salinity. They have developed experimental methods to specifically quantify and identify SUMOylated and ubiquitinated proteins in plants. Understanding how protein modification is regulated will have clear implications for agriculture, as this knowledge will be crucial for generating stress-resistant crops.
Ari joined New Phytologist as a Co-Editor in 2013 and became an Editor in 2023.