A battle around the world is raging between plants and the changing environment, and UC Davis researchers are on the front lines.

For example, the microbes are constantly creating new types of illnesses, while the plants — sometimes with the help of breeders — are developing new immunities.

It’s something plant geneticist Luca Comai, Ph.D. ’80, a distinguished professor of plant biology, has seen firsthand through his decades of research into plant chromosomes.

“Much of plant breeding is dedicated to keeping plants protected from the continuously evolving pathogens,” Comai said. “You give them a new target — you protect the plant, now you have huge selective pressure for all microbes to figure out a way to overcome that protection. … It’s a battlefield, and new weapons are being developed and aimed across the divide.” 

Comai’s current research focuses on the ways plants protect their genomes when growing, and how they send those genomes intact to the next generation. He said one exciting discovery in that area was a finding that the part of the plant devoted to reproduction is also the area with the fewest mutations. 

His work earned him a place in the National Academy of Sciences last year. He is also a faculty member with the Genome Center, and said he often feels like a kid in a toy store when he thinks about the technology that is within his reach.

“The past 50 years of DNA sequencing has been great because every year things have gotten better,” he said.

The field has come a long way from his original introduction in his native Italy, through Paul de Kruif’s influential 1926 book The Microbe Hunters. He read it as a child and it changed the course of his life.

“That really motivated me to become a scientist,” Comai said, recalling his Ph.D. in plant pathology, earned at UC Davis. “I wanted a great challenge: How can you manipulate plant genomes? When I started there was very little way of doing that.”

Flash forward to today, when genome sequencing has become not only possible, but relatively inexpensive, especially at “technology rich” institutions like UC Davis, where complex work can be done in-house. 

Comai is also able to work with other experts: He cited work with viticulturists seeking improvements to grape skins to make the plants more resistant to pathogens.

He is also focused on other specific issues with real-world applications, like the fungal disease Verticillium wilt and the threat it poses to mint across the country. His laboratory is currently working to see if mint can be modified and bred to introduce resistance to the disease. 

He said he doesn’t foresee a time when plants become immune to all diseases, but he’s hopeful science can stay one step ahead.

“We are doing things that would have been impossible 20 years ago,” he said. “It’s a privilege.”