Dr Donovan Porter

Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Research Interests

In 2003, I completed a MSc (studying antibiotic-producing marine actinomycetes) in the department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Thereafter I moved to UCT's Geology department to study sulphate reduction in salt pans, completing my PhD in 2007.

 

For my post-doc research, I am working with Pantoea ananatis, an emerging plant pathogen with a ubiquitous distribution. A poorly understood aspect of P. ananatis biology and ecology is its survival outside of host plants, especially in environments such as soil and water. Thus my work focuses on i) determining environmental conditions conducive to survival of P. ananatis in such environments and ii) identifying the genes responsible for the above and the conditions under which they are expressed.