Huge congratulations to Beverley Glover & Uta Paszkowski on being elected Fellows of the @royalsociety.org - a wonderful recognition of their significant contributions to plant sciences! 🎉
Read more: tinyurl.com/3vetucr4
@beverleycubg.bsky.social @paszkowskilab.bsky.social 🧪
Department of Plant Sciences Cambridge
Preprint: Plant pathogens cleave 2’cADPR to suppress TIR immune signaling
Inspired by knowledge on how phages inhibit bacterial immunity, we now show that disease-causing bacteria inhibit plant immunity in a similar way. A 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Now out in Science Advances.
Inceptin Receptor helps attract predatory wasps in two years of field experiments.
Next steps: can we tune both receptor recognition and volatile blend traits in crops + companion plants?
Sorek Lab
Host killing by necrotrophs is really complex.
Using a 29-gene knockout series in Botrytis cinerea, we show that removing nearly all known cell death-inducing proteins and major phytotoxins is not sufficient to prevent host necrosis.
Check out the paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🌱🧬Single cell omics, metabolite imaging, and high quality genomes are transforming plant specialized metabolism research.
This guide covers methods, workflows, common pitfalls, and a practical pathway discovery pipeline for newcomers #plantscience @embojournal.org
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
It’s an absolute pleasure and honour to have finally met @nkwhiteman.bsky.social, a pioneer in developing model systems (Arabidopsis & leaf-mining drosophila S. flava). Thank you for an inspiring keynote lecture at #MECS2026 highlighting the unpredictability and resilience in science for us ECRs!
Amazing! This report suggests that a gall aphid injects into their plant host an enzyme that manipulates auxin levels in the host and thereby induces galls.
#plantscience #plantsci
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
To activate plant immunity, NLR receptors such as SUMM2 form resistosome complexes, which act as Ca2+-permeable plasma-membrane channels. Work @nature shows how SUMM2 and its associates assemble into even higher-order clusters to initiate cell death.
shorturl.at/653TZ
plus N&V
shorturl.at/vqqYg
When caterpillars attack, the common bean plant relies on a receptor in its leaves to sound a chemical rallying cry that recruits predatory wasps, a new #ScienceAdvances study finds. https://scim.ag/434rXN5
Yan Ma
Adam Steinbrenner
Abiotic Stress in Plants
Science Magazine
www.biorxiv.org
Sadaf Shadan
Small molecules produced by TIR (Toll-interleukin-1 receptor) domains are essential for plant immune signaling. A central TIR-derived signal is 2'cADPR, a cyclic ADP-ribose (ADPR) molecule that is gen...
How do predatory wasps find their caterpillar prey?
In our new preprint on Biorxiv we show that the host plant's immune system detects herbivory to sound the alarm. 🌱🐛
See thread from @nataliagupa.bsky.social -- a surprising role for a plant PRR in indirect defense against herbivores.
Recent developments in single-cell -omic and metabolite imaging technologies and the increasing availability of high-quality genome assemblies are having a transformative impact on the way research is...
Botrytis cinerea is a necrotrophic plant pathogen with an extremely wide host range. During invasion, the fungus induces rapid host cell death and proliferates in the necrotic tissue. The mechanisms o...
SUMM2, a coiled-coil NLR, promotes the assembly of higher-order resistosome clusters to initiate cell death in plants.
shorturl.at
A small-peptide signalling axis involving RGF family members controls resilience to cold stress in tomatoes and rice; modulating this pathway prevents cold-induced yield losses.
At the @gmivienna.bsky.social with Junior Group Leader Dr. Yan Ma, who is going pioneering work on molecular mechanisms of gall formation (using the “Swede” midge and Arabidopsis). Swede=rutabaga. Yan is one of the few studying flies that attack above ground Arabdidopsis, so we are kindred spirits!
Noah Whiteman
I am thrilled to share the 2nd chapter of my PhD with @adsteinbrenner.bsky.social In collaboration with @tiszapatrick we demonstrated that the LRR-RLP INR is the missing molecular link between caterpillar recognition and predatory wasp recruitment in the field. A thread 1/6
Natalia Guayazán Palacios
A plant immune receptor mediates tritrophic interactions by linking caterpillar detection to predator recruitment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.29.667524v1
