The German Phytomedical Society e.V. (DPG) awards TBG-PI Prof. Dr. Marco Thines of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt a prize for his research on filamentous pathogens. The Rudolf Heitefuß Preis is awarded for outstanding scientific achievements. Thines is studying the diversity of plant pathogens and their hosts. For example, he investigates oomycetes, a group that includes pathogens causing widespread plant diseases such as late blight of potatoes and tomatoes and downy mildew. Worldwide, plant-parasitic oomycetes and blight fungi cause losses in the billions every year. Despite their economic importance, only a fraction of their actual biodiversity has been discovered to date. At LOEWE-TBG Thines leads the project “Landscape genomics of plant-pathogen interactions”. Read press release at Senckenberg.