Martin Dickman

Martin B. Dickman was born in Flushing, New York, on February 16, 1953. He received his B.S. degree in horticulture and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in plant pathology from the University of Hawaii. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Washington State University, he joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 1987 as an assistant professor, was promoted to full professor in 1997, and is now the Charles Bessey Professor of Plant Pathology.Dr. Dickman’s research program is focused primarily on fundamental studies in fungal–plant interactions, including regulation of pathogenicity genes during fungal pathogen growth and differentiation in host plants, host–pathogen signal communication, and the mechanism of action of fumonisin, a mycotoxin produced in plant tissue with significant pathological consequences for livestock and potentially for humans. He is particularly interested in examining the molecular mechanisms that govern plant disease and stress responses. Early in his research career, Dr. Dickman recognized the potential of molecular and genetic approaches to address fundamental questions in host–pathogen interactions. He characterized an extracellular cutinase from Colletotrichum gloeosporioides and determined its role in pathogenesis of papaya through the development and analysis of cutinase-deficient mutants. He showed that insertion of the cutinase gene into a wound pathogen enabled it to infect intact plants. In studies on other fungal pathogens, he developed and analyzed mutants to establish oxalic acid as a pathogenicity factor in Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and later showed that it functions by suppressing the oxidative burst. He developed nitrate nonutilizing mutants to study vegetative compatibility and genetic relatedness in Colletotrichum species. His studies on the role of cyclic AMP and calcium in fungal development and the participation of signal transduction pathways involving various classes of protein kinases and phosphatases in pathogenesis are among the most thorough and significant contributions in this area of plant pathology.