Johanna Wong-Bajracharya Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2021

Johanna Wong-Bajracharya

Johanna is a molecular biologist with a broad range of bioinformatics skills, and her research focuses on the plant-microbial interaction. She is a research officer in the plant biosecurity team of the Department of Primary Industries NSW. Her current role focuses on the development of molecular diagnostic assays for exotic bacterial pathogens that poses threat on Australian agroforestry industry. Prior to that, she worked as a research associate at the University of Technology Sydney where she was involved in the development of metagenomic workflow for antimicrobial resistance detection in wastewater. Johanna had completed her PhD at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University in 2020. She studied the belowground chemical signalling between eucalypt roots and soil fungi using metabolomics and transcriptomics techniques. The aim of her study is to distinguish the chemical signals that enable mutualistic mycorrhizal symbiosis from those that trigger defence responses in the host plants. She will discuss some of her work in her PhD in the conference.