James R. Alfano was born June 2, 1963, in Burbank, CA. He received his B.S. degree in 1986 in microbiology from San Diego State University and his Ph.D. degree in 1993 in microbiology from Washington State University, where he pursued his thesis research at the Institute of Biological Chemistry. From 1993 to 1997, he was a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Plant Pathology of Cornell University (CU) in Ithaca, NY. From 1997 to 2000, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. In 2000, he moved to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is now a professor in the Plant Science Initiative and the Department of Plant Pathology.Alfano’s research focuses on the type III secretion system (T3SS) of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 and the effector proteins injected via the T3SS into plant cells by this model pathogen. The T3SS is central to the virulence of DC3000 and many other Gram-negative plant pathogens, and Alfano has made major contributions to several aspects of our current understanding of this system, including the genomic context of the T3SS, the control of substrate traffic, the role of chaperones in effector delivery, the ability of various type III effectors in the DC3000 repertoire to suppress plant defenses, and the biochemical activity of two effectors, HopAO1 and HopU1.
