Academic and Professional Background

• Background:

  BSc(Hons) First Class in Botany; University of Otago - Identification and characterisation of Tomato spotted wilt virus in Senecio jacobea and Prunella vulgaris

• Research:

  Identifying molecular indicators of plant virus infection

• Publications:
  1. Lilly ST, Drummond RS, Pearson MN, Macdiarmid RM.Identification and Validation of Reference Genes for Normalization of Transcripts from Virus-Infected Arabidopsis thaliana.Mol Plant Microbe Interact. 2011 Mar;24(3):294-304.
  2. Herath S, Lilly ST, Santos NR, Gilbert RO, Goetze L, Bryant CE, White JO, Cronin J, Sheldon IM. Expression of genes associated with immunity in the endometrium of cattle with disparate postpartum uterine disease and fertility. Reprod Biol Endocrinol. 2009 May 29;7:55.
  3. Herath S, Lilly ST, Fischer DP, Williams EJ, Dobson H, Bryant CE, Sheldon IM. Bacterial lipopolysaccharide induces an endocrine switch from prostaglandin F2alpha to prostaglandin E2 in bovine endometrium. Endocrinology. 2009 Apr;150(4):1912-20.
• Personal Resume:

  After completing my Honours degree at Otago, I worked as a Research Technician in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Reproduction and Development group at the Royal Veterinary College, London. I never lost my interest in plant-interactions and returned back to New Zealand to undertake this PhD project at Plant and Food Research, Mt Albert, Auckland supervised by Dr. Robin MacDiarmid (Plant & Food), Assoc Prof. Mike Pearson (University of Auckland) and Dr. Gerard Clover (MAF Biosecurity). Plants respond to virus infection through an antiviral mechanism - RNA silencing (RNAi) - and through stress-related pathways that include increased expression of salicylic acid, defence genes and heat shock proteins. Plant gene expression and development is also altered by virus infection through interference of phytohormone and RNAi pathways. These responses to infection provide a basis to search for possible indicators to ascertain whether a plant is virus infected or not. The aim of my project is to characterise the molecular impacts of a range of viruses with a view to devising a set of assays that can be used as tools to identify infected plants. Such tools are of importance to MAF Biosecurity who is responsible for keeping new plant virus infections from crossing our border. The aims will first be addressed by investigating whether a range of viruses infecting Arabidopsis share common impacts on their host and whether the identified impacts can be used on a wide range of plants to identify virus infection.