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Boris Vinatzer

Bio

Boris A. Vinatzer is a Professor at Virginia Tech's School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. His research spans from molecular plant-microbe interactions to molecular evolution and taxonomy of plant pathogenic bacteria. He takes advantage of the revolution in DNA sequencing technology to develop bioinformatics tools for precise and fast detection, classification, and identification of plant pathogens and biocontrol agents. A second area of research focuses on environmental microbes that may play a role in the formation of precipitation. Dr. Vinatzer teaches an interdisciplinary undergraduate course in Microbial Forensics and Biosecurity in which he covers concepts of biosecurity through examples of bioterrorism and natural disease epidemics of humans, animals, and plants. Dr. Vinatzer has published over 75 peer-reviewed research articles and book-chapters.

Education

Affiliations

Preferred Pronouns

He/him/his

Personal Academic Website

https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/lab-vinatzer/home

Topics of Interest/Expertise
 

Countries of Work/Collaboration

United States

Projects

Papers

Belay KH, Abdelrazek S, Kaur S, Mazloom R, Bily D, Gyatso T, Avin FA, Bonkowski J, Liyanapathiranage P, Rodriguez Salamanca L, Heath LS, Baysal-Gurel F, Vinatzer BA. (2026). Genomic insights into Ceratobasidium sp. associated with vascular streak dieback of woody ornamentals in the United States using a metagenomic sequencing approach. Microbiology spectrum

Carpenter C, Kern K, Hanlon R, Vinatzer BA, Schmale DG 3rd., Foroutan H. (2026). Colonization of Microplastics by Different Strains of Pseudomonas Syringae Increases Ice-Nucleation Activity. Environmental science & technology

Eufemio RJ, Rojas M, Shaw K, de Almeida Ribeiro I, Guo HB, Renzer G, Belay K, Liu H, Suseendran P, Wang X, Fröhlich-Nowoisky J, Pöschl U, Bonn M, Berry RJ, Molinero V, Vinatzer BA, Meister K. (2026). A previously unrecognized class of fungal ice-nucleating proteins with bacterial ancestry. Science advances, 12(11)

Elmgreen VN, Ramirez B, Sharma R, Vinatzer BA, Lowe-Power TM, Pierce-Ward NT. (2026). An interactive dashboard for global reports on the Ralstonia solanacearum species complex. Access microbiology, 8(1)

Shin GY, De Armas S, Galván GA, Siri MI, Rojas M, Vinatzer BA, Asselin JAE, Stodghill P, Zhao M, Dutta B, Tambong J, Kvitko BH. (2026). Comparative genomics of Pantoea allii lineages and distribution of ecologically relevant traits. Microbial genomics, 12(2)

Anderson RG, Chang JH, Dangl JL, Dinkeloo K, Donofrio N, Eulgem T, Grünwald NJ, Herlihy J, Long T, Mukhtar MS, Pilot G, Sherif SM, Sonawala U, Tör M, Winkel B, Vinatzer BA. (2025). John Matthew McDowell: A Visionary Leader in Molecular Oomycete-Plant Interactions and a Wonderful Mentor and Friend to Many. Molecular plant-microbe interactions : MPMI

Bily D, Gyatso T, Avin F, Bonkowski J, Liyanapathiranage P, Vinatzer BA, Rodriguez Salamanca L, Baysal-Gurel F. (2026). A Ceratobasidium Species Associated with Vascular Streak Dieback of Woody Ornamental Plants in Virginia, U.S.A. Plant disease

Abdelrazek S, Salamanca LR, Vinatzer BA. (2025). Metagenomic Sequencing of Tomato Plants with Wilt Symptoms Allows for Strain-Level Pathogen Identification and Genome-Based Characterization. Phytopathology

Dewberry RJ, Sharma P, Prom JL, Kinscherf NA, Lowe-Power T, Mazloom R, Zhang X, Liu H, Arif M, Stulberg M, Heath LS, Eversole K, Beattie GA, Vinatzer BA, Allen C. (2024). Genotypic and Phenotypic Analyses Show Ralstonia solanacearum Cool Virulence is a Quantitative Trait Not Restricted to Race 3 biovar 2. Phytopathology

Grünwald NJ, Bock C, Chang JH, de Souza AA, Del Ponte E, du Toit LJ, Dorrance AE, Dung JKS, Gent DH, Goss EM, Lowe-Power T, Madden LV, Martin FN, McDowell JM, Naegele R, Potnis N, Quesada-Ocampo L, Sundin GW, Thiessen L, Vinatzer B, Zeng Q. (2024). Open Access and Reproducibility in Plant Pathology Research: Guidelines and Best Practices. Phytopathology

Pena MM, Bhandari R, Bowers RM, Weis K, Newberry E, Wagner N, Pupko T, Jones JB, Woyke T, Vinatzer BA, Jacques MA, Potnis N. (2024). Genetic and Functional Diversity Help Explain Pathogenic, Weakly Pathogenic, and Commensal Lifestyles in the Genus Xanthomonas. Genome biology and evolution, 16(4)

Johnson MA, Vinatzer BA, Li S. (2023). Reference-Free Plant Disease Detection Using Machine Learning and Long-Read Metagenomic Sequencing. Applied and environmental microbiology, 89(6)

Crosby KC, Rojas M, Sharma P, Johnson MA, Mazloom R, Kvitko BH, Smits THM, Venter SN, Coutinho TA, Heath LS, Palmer M, Vinatzer BA. (2023). Genomic delineation and description of species and within-species lineages in the genus Pantoea. Frontiers in microbiology, (14)

Abdelrazek S, Bush E, Oliver CL, Liu H, Sharma P, Aguilera Flores M, Donegan MA, Almeida R, Nita M, Vinatzer B. (2023). A survey of Xylella fastidiosa in the US state of Virginia reveals wide distribution of both subspecies fastidiosa and multiplex in grapevine. Phytopathology

Sharma P, Johnson MA, Mazloom R, Allen C, Heath LS, Lowe-Power TM, Vinatzer BA. (2022). Meta-analysis of the Ralstonia solanacearum species complex (RSSC) based on comparative evolutionary genomics and reverse ecology. Microbial genomics, 8(3)

Yang S, Johnson MA, Hansen MA, Bush E, Li S, Vinatzer BA. (2022). Metagenomic sequencing for detection and identification of the boxwood blight pathogen Calonectria pseudonaviculata. Scientific reports, 12(1)

Pritchard L, Brown CT, Harrington B, Heath LS, Pierce-Ward NT, Vinatzer BA. (2022). Could a Focus on the "Why" of Taxonomy Help Taxonomy Better Respond to the Needs of Science and Society?. Frontiers in microbiology, (13)

Yang S, Rojas M, Coleman JJ, Vinatzer BA. (2022). Identification of Candidate Ice Nucleation Activity (INA) Genes in Fusarium avenaceum by Combining Phenotypic Characterization with Comparative Genomics and Transcriptomics. Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland), 8(9)

Johnson MA, Liu H, Bush E, Sharma P, Yang S, Mazloom R, Heath LS, Nita M, Li S, Vinatzer BA. (2022). Investigating plant disease outbreaks with long-read metagenomics: sensitive detection and highly resolved phylogenetic reconstruction applied to Xylella fastidiosa. Microbial genomics, 8(5)

Tian L, Mazloom R, Heath LS, Vinatzer BA. (2021). LINflow: a computational pipeline that combines an alignment-free with an alignment-based method to accelerate generation of similarity matrices for prokaryotic genomes. PeerJ, (9)

Yang S, Vinatzer BA. (2021). Draft Genome Sequence of Mortierella alpina Strain LL118, Isolated from an Aspen (Populus tremuloides) Leaf Litter Sample. Microbiology resource announcements, 10(47)

Failor KC, Liu H, Llontop MEM, LeBlanc S, Eckshtain-Levi N, Sharma P, Reed A, Yang S, Tian L, Lefevre C, Menguy N, Du L, Monteil CL, Vinatzer BA. (2021). Ice nucleation in a Gram-positive bacterium isolated from precipitation depends on a polyketide synthase and non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. The ISME journal

Failor KC, Liu H, Llontop MEM, LeBlanc S, Eckshtain-Levi N, Sharma P, Reed A, Yang S, Tian L, Lefevre CT, Menguy N, Du L, Monteil CL, Vinatzer BA. (2021). Correction to: Ice nucleation in a Gram-positive bacterium isolated from precipitation depends on a polyketide synthase and non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. The ISME journal

Vinatzer BA. (2021). The Power of a Statewide Survey When Phenotypic Testing Is Combined with Genomics-Enabled Molecular Characterization and Network Analyses. Phytopathology

Stam R, Gladieux P, Vinatzer BA, Goss EM, Potnis N, Candresse T, Brewer MT. (2020). Population Genomic- and Phylogenomic-Enabled Advances to Increase Insight Into Pathogen Biology and Epidemiology. Phytopathology, 111(1)

Mechan Llontop ME, Hurley K, Tian L, Bernal Galeano VA, Wildschutte HK, Marine SC, Yoder KS, Vinatzer BA. (2020). Exploring Rain as Source of Biological Control Agents for Fire Blight on Apple. Frontiers in microbiology, (11)

Roman-Reyna V, Truchon A, Sharma P, Hand FP, Mazloom R, Vinatzer BA, Jacobs JM, Allen C. (2020). Genome Resource: Ralstonia solanacearum Phylotype II Sequevar 1 (Race 3 Biovar 2) Strain UW848 From the 2020 U.S. Geranium Introduction. Plant disease

Tian L, Huang C, Mazloom R, Heath LS, Vinatzer BA. (2020). LINbase: a web server for genome-based identification of prokaryotes as members of crowdsourced taxa. Nucleic acids research, 48(W1)

Mechan Llontop ME, Sharma P, Aguilera Flores M, Yang S, Pollok J, Tian L, Huang C, Rideout S, Heath LS, Li S, Vinatzer BA. (2020). Strain-Level Identification of Bacterial Tomato Pathogens Directly from Metagenomic Sequences. Phytopathology, 110(4)

Eckshtain-Levi N, Weisberg AJ, Vinatzer BA. (2018). The population genetic test Tajima's D identifies genes encoding pathogen-associated molecular patterns and other virulence-related genes in Ralstonia solanacearum. Molecular plant pathology, 19(9)

Curland RD, Gao L, Bull CT, Vinatzer BA, Dill-Macky R, Van Eck L, Ishimaru CA. (2018). Genetic Diversity and Virulence of Wheat and Barley Strains of Xanthomonas translucens from the Upper Midwestern United States. Phytopathology, 108(4)

Clarke CR, Vinatzer BA. Characterizing the Immune-Eliciting Activity of Putative Microbe-Associated Molecular Patterns in Tomato. Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.), (1578)

Vinatzer BA, Tian L, Heath LS. (2017). A proposal for a portal to make earth's microbial diversity easily accessible and searchable. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 110(10)

Pietsch RB, Vinatzer BA, Schmale DG 3rd.. (2017). Diversity and Abundance of Ice Nucleating Strains of Pseudomonas syringae in a Freshwater Lake in Virginia, USA. Frontiers in microbiology, (8)

Guinard J, Vinatzer BA, Poussier S, Lefeuvre P, Wicker E. (2016). Draft Genome Sequences of Nine Strains of Ralstonia solanacearum Differing in Virulence to Eggplant (Solanum melongena). Genome announcements, 4(1)

Clarke CR, Hayes BW, Runde BJ, Markel E, Swingle BM, Vinatzer BA. (2016). Comparative genomics of Pseudomonas syringae pathovar tomato reveals novel chemotaxis pathways associated with motility and plant pathogenicity. PeerJ, (4)

Vinatzer BA, Weisberg AJ, Monteil CL, Elmarakeby HA, Sheppard SK, Heath LS. (2016). A Proposal for a Genome Similarity-Based Taxonomy for Plant-Pathogenic Bacteria that Is Sufficiently Precise to Reflect Phylogeny, Host Range, and Outbreak Affiliation Applied to Pseudomonas syringae sensu lato as a Proof of Concept. Phytopathology, 107(1)

Hind SR, Strickler SR, Boyle PC, Dunham DM, Bao Z, O'Doherty IM, Baccile JA, Hoki JS, Viox EG, Clarke CR, Vinatzer BA, Schroeder FC, Martin GB. (2016). Tomato receptor FLAGELLIN-SENSING 3 binds flgII-28 and activates the plant immune system. Nature plants, (2)

Monteil CL, Yahara K, Studholme DJ, Mageiros L, Méric G, Swingle B, Morris CE, Vinatzer BA, Sheppard SK. (2016). Population-genomic insights into emergence, crop adaptation and dissemination of Pseudomonas syringae pathogens. Microbial genomics, 2(10)

Clarke CR, Studholme DJ, Hayes B, Runde B, Weisberg A, Cai R, Wroblewski T, Daunay MC, Wicker E, Castillo JA, Vinatzer BA. (2015). Genome-Enabled Phylogeographic Investigation of the Quarantine Pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum Race 3 Biovar 2 and Screening for Sources of Resistance Against Its Core Effectors. Phytopathology, 105(5)

Vinatzer BA, Monteil CL, Clarke CR. (2014). Harnessing population genomics to understand how bacterial pathogens emerge, adapt to crop hosts, and disseminate. Annual review of phytopathology, (52)

Marakeby H, Badr E, Torkey H, Song Y, Leman S, Monteil CL, Heath LS, Vinatzer BA. (2014). A system to automatically classify and name any individual genome-sequenced organism independently of current biological classification and nomenclature. PloS one, 9(2)

Vinatzer BA. (2012). "Listening in" on how a bacterium takes over the plant vascular system. mBio, 3(5)

Vinatzer BA, Yan S. (2007). Mining the genomes of plant pathogenic bacteria: how not to drown in gigabases of sequence. Molecular plant pathology, 9(1)

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