Brande Wulff

Faculty

Associate Professor of Plant Science | Principal Investigator of The Wulff Lab

Location:

B2/R3277

Social Profile:

Biography

Brande Wulff is a Molecular Plant Pathologist and Geneticist. He recently took up a faculty position in the Center for Desert Agriculture where he established The Wulff Lab. Prior to joining KAUST, he was Group Leader at the John Innes Centre (UK) and Research Manager at The Sainsbury Laboratory (UK). Wulff received his PhD from The Sainsbury Laboratory in 2002 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the IBMCP Institute for Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology (Spain) and IBMP Institute of Molecular Biology of Plants (France) with fellowships from the European Molecular Biology Organization and the Human Frontier Science Program.

Research Interests

The Wulff Lab's research program explores the genetics of disease resistance in wheat. This has led to developing fast, new, and efficient methods for gene discovery and cloning which use mutant and natural populations followed by sequence alignment to locate genes. Wulff has also co-developed a method for halving the generation time of wheat and other crops in a controlled environment, dramatically speeding up capabilities for research and breeding purposes. His long-term aim is to use cloned genes from wild ancestors of wheat to engineer durable resistance to these diseases in cultivated wheat.

Selected Publications

  • Diversifying the menu for crop powdery mildew resistance, JKM BROWN, BBH WULFF, Cell, 2022, 185:761-763.
  • Reference genome-assisted identification of stem rust resistance gene Sr62 encoding a tandem kinase, YU G, MATNY O, CHAMPOURET N, STEUERNAGEL B, MOSCOU MJ, HERNÁNDEZ-PINZÓN I, GREEN P, HAYTA S, SMEDLEY M, HARWOOD W, KANGARA N, YUE Y, GARDENER C, MANFIELD MJ, OLIVERA PD, WELCHIN C, SIMMONS J, MILLET E, MINZ-DUB A, RONEN M, AVNI R, SHARON A, PATPOUR M, JUSTESEN AF, JAYAKODI M, HIMMELBACH A, STEIN N, WU S, POLAND J, ENS J, POZNIAK C, KARAFIÁTOVÁ M, MOLNÁR I, DOLEŽEL J, WARD ER, REUBER TL, JONES JDG, MASCHER M, STEFFENSON BJ, WULFF BBH, Nature Communications, 2022, 13:1607.
  • Population genomic analysis of Aegilops tauschii identifies targets for bread wheat improvement, GAURAV K, ARORA S, SILVA P, SÁNCHEZ-MARTÍN J, HORSNELL R, GAO L, BRAR GS, WIDRIG V, RAUPP J, SINGH N, WU S, KALE SM, CHINOY C, NICHOLSON P, QUIROZ-CHÁVEZ J, SIMMONDS J, HAYTA S, SMEDLEY MA, HARWOOD W, PEARCE S, GILBERT D, KANGARA N, GARDENER C, FORNER-MARTÍNEZ M, LIU J, YU G, BODEN S, PASCUCCI A, GHOSH S, HAFEEZ AN, O'HARA T, WAITES J, CHEEMA J, STEUERNAGEL B, PATPOUR M, JUSTESEN AF, LIU S, RUDD JC, AVNI R, SHARON A, STEINER B, PKIRANA RP, BUERSTMAYR H, MEHRABI AA, NASYROVA FY, CHAYUT N, MATNY O, STEFFENSON BJ, SANDHU N, CHHUNEJA P, LAGUDAH E, ELKOT AF, TYRRELL S, BIAN X, DAVEY RP, SIMONSEN M, SCHAUSER L, TIWARI VK, KUTCHER HR, HUCL P, LI A, LIU D-C, MAO L, XU S, BROWN-GUEDIRA G, FARIS J, DVORAK J, LUO M-C, KRASILEVA K, LUX T, ARTMEIER S, MAYER KFX, UAUY C, MASCHER M, BENTLEY AR, KELLER B, POLAND J, WULFF BBH, Nature Biotechnology, 2022, 40:422–431.
  • Creation and judicious application of a wheat resistance gene atlas, HAFEEZ AN, ARORA S, GHOSH S, GILBERT D, BOWDEN RL, WULFF BBH, Molecular Plant, 2021, 14:1053–1070.
  • Breeding a fungal gene into wheat, WULFF BBH, JONES JDG, Science, 2020, 368:822-823.
  • NLR-Annotator tool enables annotation of the intracellular immune receptor repertoire, STEUERNAGEL B, WITEK K, KRATTINGER SG, RAMIREZ-GONZALES RH, SCHONBEEK HJ, YU G, BAGGS E, WITEK AI, YADAV I, KRASILEVA KV, JONES JDG, UAUY C, KELLER B, RIDOUT CJ, WULFF BBH, Plant Physiology, 2020, 183:468–482.
  • Breeding crops to feed 10 billion, HICKEY LT, HAFEEZ A, ROBINSON H, JACKSON SA, LEAL-BERTIOLI SCM, TESTER M, GAO C, GODWIN ID, HAYES BJ, WULFF BBH, Nature Biotechnology, 2019, 37:744-754.
  • Resistance gene cloning from a wild crop relative by sequence capture and association genetics, ARORA S, STEUERNAGEL B, GAURAV K, CHANDRAMOHAN S, LONG Y, MATNY O, JOHNSON R, ENK J, PERIYANNAN S, NARINDER S, HATTA MAMD, ATHIYANNAN N, CHEEMA J, YU G, KANGARA N, GHOSH S, SZABO LJ, POLAND J, BARIANA H, JONES JDG, BENTLEY AR, AYLIFFE M, OLSON E, XU SS, STEFFENSON BJ, LAGUDAH E, WULFF BBH, Nature Biotechnology, 2019, 37:139-143.
  • Wheat, the cereal abandoned by GM, DHUGGA KS, WULFF BBH, Science, 2018, 361:451-452.
  • Rapid cloning of disease-resistance genes in plants using mutagenesis and sequence capture, STEUERNAGEL B, PERIYANNAN SK, HERNÁNDEZ-PINZÓN I, WITEK K, ROUSE MN, YU G, HATTA A, AYLIFFE M, BARIANA H, JONES JDG, LAGUDAH ES, WULFF BBH, Nature Biotechnology, 2016, 34:652-5.

Education

  • PhD, Plant Biology, The Sainsbury Laboratory, UK, 2001
  • BSc, Plant Biology, University of East Anglia, UK, 1997

Professional Profile

  • 2021-present: Associate Professor, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
  • 2014-2021: Group Leader, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK
  • 2010-2014: Research Manager, 2Blades Group, The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK
  • 2008-2010: Postdoc, IBMP-CNRS, Strasbourg, France
  • 2005-2008: Human Frontiers Postdoc Fellow, IBMCP-CSIC, Valencia, Spain
  • 2004-2005: EMBO Postdoc Fellow, IBMCP-CSIC, Valencia, Spain
  • 2002-2004: Postdoc, The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK

Awards

  • 2019 JIC Exceptional Performance Award
  • 2018-2021 Honorary Readership, University of East Anglia
  • 2014-2021 Adjunct Group Leader, The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK
  • 2012-2018 Honorary Lecturer, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
  • 2005-2008 Human Frontiers Science Program Long-Term Fellowship
  • 2004-2005 EMBO Long-Term Fellowship
  • 1998-2000 PhD Scholarship from the Danish Research Academy
  • 1997 Tony Sims Prize, best final-year project in experimental biology

KAUST Affiliations

Research Interests Keywords

wheat wild wheat relatives wild wheats wheat rust genomics bioinformatics resistance genes gene cloning GWAS GM crops