Barbara Kunkel's research group is interested in the signaling and regulatory events that govern interactions between bacterial plant pathogens and their hosts. The group is studying the bacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and one of its hosts, Arabidopsis thaliana, a system in which both pathogen and host are amenable to genetic and molecular analysis. The group's approach involves identifying and characterizing both pathogen and plant genes that govern whether interactions between these two organisms result in disease or not. The research currently focuses on two central areas: 1) The molecular basis of pathogenicity in P. syringae, and 2) The physiological processes and signaling pathways in the plant host that are modified by pathogen virulence factors.