Saskia’s lab investigates how plants detect, interpret, and respond to biotic challenges, with a particular emphasis on how plant immunity, metabolism, and development are reprogrammed during interactions with sap feeding insects and the microbes they transmit.
A major focus is on plant responses to hemipteran sap feeders, including aphids, leafhoppers, planthoppers, psyllids, whiteflies, and spittlebugs. The lab studies how effectors and other virulence factors in insect oral secretions remodel plant processes via targeting key host proteins and regulatory nodes.
Many sap feeding insects also transmit phytoplasmas, bacterial pathogens that induce dramatic, gall like developmental symptoms, including witches’ brooms and phyllody. These outcomes are driven by secreted phytoplasma effectors that interact with, and in some cases promote the degradation of, conserved plant proteins, including TCP, MADS box, SPL, and GATA transcription factors. Phytoplasma infection can further reshape plant defence and physiology in ways that increase susceptibility and influence traits relevant to pathogen spread.
The lab has generated genomics resources for phytoplasmas and their hemipteran vectors and uses comparative and population genomics to study gene evolution.
By leveraging insect and phytoplasma proteins as molecular probes, the team has uncovered previously unrecognised plant pathways that regulate defence signalling, transcriptional control, and resource allocation.
They have also laid the groundwork for protein engineering approaches aimed at discovering or designing novel biomolecules with biotechnological potential.
The work integrates functional genomics, molecular genetics, and plant pathology with mechanistic modelling and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify causal mechanisms and build predictive models of plant responses.
- BRIGIT – Vector-Borne Disease of Plants
- Zombie plants in the media: The microbial molecule that turns plants into zombies
Awards
2025 – President of the British Society for Plant Pathology (BSPP).
2024 – Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Elected, Royal Society, 12 July 2024.
2024 – Robert F. Whitcomb Award given in recognition of outstanding research achievements in the field of plant and insect mycoplasmology. International Organization of Mycoplasmology (IOM).
2023 – Elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
2021 – APS Fellow, American Phytopathological Society (APS).
2017 – Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London.
2019 RKS Wood Award, British Society for Plant Pathology (BSPP).
2018 Alfred M. Boyce Lecture Award, Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, USA.
2013 Ross Beever Memorial Lecture Award, Australasian Plant Virology, Univ. Auckland, New Zealand.
2012 The Derrick Edward Award for outstanding research in (metazoan and plant) Mycoplasmology. International Organization of Mycoplasmology (IOM).
Selected Publications
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Mirkin FG, Mugford ST, Thole V, Marzo M, Hogenhout S (2025)Effector innovation in genome-reduced phytoplasmas and other host-dependent mollicutes.PLoS geneticsPublisher's version: 1553-7390
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Gravino M, Mugford ST, Pontiggia D, Joyce J, Drurey C, Prince DC, Cervone F, Giulia DELORENZO, Hogenhout S (2025)Aphid effector Mp10 balances immune suppression and defence activation through EDS1-dependent modulation of plant DAMP responses.New Phytologist (248(2))Publisher's version: 0028-646X
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Liu Q, Neefjes ACM, Singh A, Kobylinska R, Mugford ST, Marzo M, Canham J, Schuster M, Van der Hoorn R, Chen Y, Hogenhout S (2025)Aphid effectors suppress plant immunity via recruiting defense proteins to processing bodies.Science advancesPublisher's version: 2375-2548
Opportunities
Enquiries to join the group from interested postgraduate and postdoctoral scientists are always welcomed.
Fellowship and PhD studentship positions can potentially be funded by the BBSRC, EU or John Innes Centre.