Rebecca Schwab

Ecological Genetics

Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen
Adjunct faculty in: IMPRS

Vita

PhD, MPI for Developmental Biology (2006)
Postdoctoral training, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (2006-2008) and IBMP-CNRS/ETH Zürich (2009-2012)
Staff scientist, MPI for Developmental Biology (2012-2018)
Project leader, MPI for Biology Tübingen (since 2019)

Research Interest

We study plant-pathogen interaction from an ecological perspective and bring our knowledge of the genes that mediate the interaction back into the field. For this, we look at wild plant populations and investigate the genetic heterogeneity of pathogen virulence and host resistance genes - together with their distribution across space and their (co-)evolution over time. Our study system is the small cruciferous weed Arabidopsis thaliana and its specialist oomycete pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis, a beautiful example for gene-for-gene interaction.

A field of flowering Arabidopsis thaliana in the front, with mountains and a blue sky in the background

Available PhD Projects

Currently not recruiting PhD students

Selected peer-reviewed Publications

Karasov TL, Shirsekar G, Schwab R, Weigel D. What natural variation can teach us about resistance durability. Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2020.04.010
Karasov TL, Neumann M, Leventhal L, Symeonidi E, Shirsekar G, Hawks A, Monroe G; Pathodopsis Team; Exposito-Alonso M, Bergelson J, Weigel D, Schwab R. Continental-scale associations of Arabidopsis thaliana phyllosphere members with host genotype and drought. Nat Microbiol. 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41564-024-01773-z