Plant biology

Eleonora holds a PhD in plant-pathogen interactions and is currently a PostDoc in the Stanley lab at Imperial College London

2024–present Imperial College London (BBSRC funded) 

PostDoc  

Supervised by Dr Claire Stanley  

Project title: FUNGI-ON-A-CHIP 

2020–2023 Imperial College London (BBSRC funded) 

PhD  

Co-supervised by Dr Giovanni Sena and Dr Tolga Bozkurt  

Thesis title: Investigating the role of electric fields in Phytophthora palmivora        interactions with Arabidopsis thaliana 

2019 – 2020

Imperial College London (BBSRC funded) 

MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (Distinction) 

First rotation thesis title: Developing a method to investigate Phytophthora palmivora zoospore electrotaxis (Supervised by Dr Tolga Bozkurt) 

Second rotation thesis title: Manipulating roots electrical currents to prevent Phytophthora infection (Supervised by Dr Giovanni Sena) 

2019

Imperial College London  

Research technician supervised by Dr Tolga Bozkurt  

Contributed to understanding the activation mechanism of plant NLR immune receptors.  

2017 – 2018

Imperial College London 

MRes Molecular Plant and Microbial Sciences (Distinction) 

First rotation thesis title: Characterization of histone demethylases REF6, ELF6 and JMJ13 during regeneration in Arabidopsis thaliana (Supervised by Dr. Jie Song) 

Second rotation thesis title: Discovering the mechanisms of immune receptor recruitment to the host pathogen interface (Supervised by Dr. Tolga Bozkurt) 

2014 – 2017

Imperial College London 

BSc (Hons) Biology (2:1)

Final year project title: Do ancient lineages of plants have specialized interactions with fungi?(Supervised by Prof. Martin Bidartondo)

Moratto, E., Rothery, S., Bozkurt, T.O. and Sena, G., 2023. Enhanced germination and electrotactic behaviour of Phytophthora palmivora zoospores in weak electric fields. Phys. Biol. pp.20 056005

Moratto, E. and Sena, G., 2023. The Bioelectricity of Plant–Biotic Interactions. Bioelectricity, 5(1), pp.47-54. 

Duggan C. J., Moratto E., Savage Z., Hamilton E., Adachi H., Wu C. H., Leary A. Y. et al. Dynamic localization of a helper NLR at the plant–pathogen interface underpins pathogen recognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 34 (2021): e2104997118. 

Adachi, H., Contreras, M.P., Harant, A., Wu, C.H., Derevnina, L., Sakai, T., Duggan, C., Moratto, E., Bozkurt, T.O., Maqbool, A. and Win, J., 2019. An N-terminal motif in NLR immune receptors is functionally conserved across distantly related plant species. Elife, 8, p.e49956. 

Publication on iNaturalist.org (2015) of mycorrhizal root-tip microscope images taken by Eleonora Moratto associated with fungal species.