Rate My Professor John Rathjen

Professor John Rathjen serves as Group Leader of the Rathjen Group - Plant Immunity in the Division of Plant Sciences, Research School of Biology at the Australian National University. He obtained his PhD in plant virology from the Waite Campus of the University of Adelaide. Rathjen conducted postdoctoral research on tomato immunity at the University of California, Davis, before leading a research group at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK, where he investigated pathogens of tomato and Arabidopsis. In 2009, he relocated to the Australian National University with an ARC Future Fellowship, expanding his research to encompass genomics of biotrophic rust fungi affecting wheat.

Rathjen's research specializations include plant immunity, plant-microbe interactions, effector proteins from fungal and bacterial pathogens, fungal disease resistance in barley and wheat, plant growth/defence trade-offs, genome evolution of wheat stripe rust fungus, sucrose source/sink dynamics in immunity, and rapid detection of plant pathogens. His laboratory has made significant contributions, such as identifying BAK1 (SERK3) as a central regulator of innate immunity in plants (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007), demonstrating the constitutive Pto kinase-Prf complex regulating specific immunity (The Plant Cell, 2006), and publishing the review 'Plant immunity: towards an integrated view of plant-pathogen interactions' (Nature Reviews Genetics, 2010). Additional key works encompass 'Host Inhibition of a Bacterial Virulence Effector Triggers Immunity to Infection' (Science, 2009) and recent studies on effector translocation by flax rust (Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 2025) and chromosome-scale genome assemblies of rust fungi (2022). Rathjen has received awards including ARC Future Fellowship (2009), ARC Discovery Projects (2010, 2024), and CSIRO OCE Postdoctoral Scheme (2011). He has delivered invited talks at selective Keystone and Banbury meetings, a plenary at the IS-MPMI XV Congress, and supervises PhD students and postdocs who have earned ARC DECRA fellowships and UNESCO-L'Oréal International Fellowships. Rathjen co-convenes BIOL2162/6162 Molecular Gene Technology, teaches modules in BIOL3106 and BIOL3107, and chairs the Plant User Group committee.