Adam Bentham
@adamrbentham.bsky.social
Assistant Prof @ Durham University Centre for Programmable Biological Matter: @cpbm-heddlelab.bsky.social Structural biologist Protein design in plant systems Engineering disease resistance Views are my own He / Him 🇦🇺🇬🇧
PLEASE SHARE! New job openings in my lab @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We have a broad interest into the mechanistic basis of how molecular complexes are rewired during cellular development in plants and during invasion by pathogens. 🌱🍄🔬 See details below 👇 #PlantSciJobs
"Programmable design of synthetic plant immune receptors for pathogen protein recognition" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
This is very cool and a phenomenal amount of work! Great to see protein design shaping the future of disease resistance bioengineering. We now really have entered the era of truly bespoke resistance! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Programmable design of synthetic plant immune receptors for pathogen protein recognition
The limited diversity and recognition scope of natural plant immune receptors impede resistance breeding against rapidly evolving pathogens. Here we report programmable design of synthetic plant immun...
science.org
Read our new review: The life and legacy of the root endodermis: A spatiotemporal view of function and development - a very nice piece by @swatimahiwal.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Excited to preprint this collaborative study led by @adamrbentham.bsky.social in which computationally-designed protein binders were generated that recognise pathogen effectors leading to a plant immune response when deployed within NLR immune receptors. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors.
The rapid evolution of plant pathogens poses a persistent threat to global agricultural sustainability, often outpacing the discovery and deployment of natural disease resistance genes. While bioengin...
biorxiv.org
Excited to see our new preprint on bioRxiv! 🌱🤖 We used AI protein design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN) to build brand-new sensor domains from scratch and installed them in a rice NLR immune receptor engineering recognition of a Fusarium effector FoSSP17
@yuxuan-xi.bsky.social · 4w agoOur new preprint is out! Using AI-guided design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN), we engineered a plant immune receptor to recognise non-cognate pathogen effectors. Huge thanks to our amazing co-authors for making this possible! doi.org/10.64898/202...
Happy to have taken part in this cool project! It's really exciting to see the potential that protein design has in plant science!
@yuxuan-xi.bsky.social · 4w agoOur new preprint is out! Using AI-guided design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN), we engineered a plant immune receptor to recognise non-cognate pathogen effectors. Huge thanks to our amazing co-authors for making this possible! doi.org/10.64898/202...
Awesome to see this bioRxiv out, after lots of great work from @yuxuan-xi.bsky.social to integrate de novo binders into a plant immune receptor! It's a very exciting time to be working on protein engineering in this field 🧬🌱
@yuxuan-xi.bsky.social · 4w agoOur new preprint is out! Using AI-guided design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN), we engineered a plant immune receptor to recognise non-cognate pathogen effectors. Huge thanks to our amazing co-authors for making this possible! doi.org/10.64898/202...
This has been a great project to work on and I’m very excited to see where this technology is headed within plant pathology. Big thanks to all the contributors, especially @yuxuan-xi.bsky.social and @adamrbentham.bsky.social!
@yuxuan-xi.bsky.social · 4w agoOur new preprint is out! Using AI-guided design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN), we engineered a plant immune receptor to recognise non-cognate pathogen effectors. Huge thanks to our amazing co-authors for making this possible! doi.org/10.64898/202...
Our new preprint is out! Using AI-guided design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN), we engineered a plant immune receptor to recognise non-cognate pathogen effectors. Huge thanks to our amazing co-authors for making this possible! doi.org/10.64898/202...
Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors.
The rapid evolution of plant pathogens poses a persistent threat to global agricultural sustainability, often outpacing the discovery and deployment of natural disease resistance genes. While bioengin...
doi.org
Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.10.737686v1
Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.10.737686v1
📚 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 "How to frustrate a plant pathogen" 🐛 From structural genomics to AI-driven protein design, this review explores new strategies for engineering broad-spectrum resistance against plant pathogen effectors. ✍️ Knight, Heddle and @adamrbentham.bsky.social 👉 doi.org/10.1111/tpj....
How to frustrate a plant pathogen
Plant pathogens deploy large families of structurally related but sequence-diverse effector proteins to manipulate host cells, allowing them to evade immune recognition whilst maintaining the capacit...
doi.org
As seen on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: our story on how the dreaded late blight pathogen hijacks a helper NLR pathway is now out in its final form! 🎉 Meet AVRcap1b: the two-faced effector 🧵👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A potato late blight pathogen effector interacts with ENTH-domain protein TOL9a and an activated helper NLR to suppress immunity
A plant pathogen effector suppresses an activated helper NLR via a host ENTH domain–containing protein, NbTOL9a.
science.org
Colletotrichum higginsianum effector ChEC108 binds a plasmodesmal HMA protein and elicits plant defence https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.19.726166v1
🚨 New Assistant Professor Position 🚨 Come join the CPBM at Durham University! If you are interested in running a lab in AI-based biomolecular design and bionanotechnology please get in touch and apply! tinyurl.com/skwr65ua @cpbm-heddlelab.bsky.social @durham-university.bsky.social
Assistant Professor (Research %26 Education)
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
durham.taleo.net
Excited to share work with Zhidian Zhang, @milot.bsky.social, @martinsteinegger.bsky.social, and @sokrypton.org biorxiv.org/content/10.1... TLDR: We introduce MSA Pairformer, a 111M parameter protein language model that challenges the scaling paradigm in self-supervised protein language modeling🧵
Scaling down protein language modeling with MSA Pairformer
Recent efforts in protein language modeling have focused on scaling single-sequence models and their training data, requiring vast compute resources that limit accessibility. Although models that use ...
biorxiv.org
Stay tuned for details on the 6th edition of MLSB, officially happening this December in downtown San Diego, CA!
Gina El Nesr@ginaelnesr.bsky.social · last yr.The MLSB workshop will be in San Diego, CA (co-located with NeurIPS) this year for its 6th edition in December 🧬🔬 Stay tuned @workshopmlsb.bsky.social as we share details about the stellar lineup of speakers, the official call for papers, and other announcements!🌟
I am super excited to announce that I will be starting my lab at the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Zurich in Switzerland next year!
Our paper on: A coarse-grained model for simulations of phosphorylated disordered proteins (aka parameters for phospho-serine and -threonine for CALVADOS) is now published in Biophysical Journal authors.elsevier.com/a/1lTcE1SPTB... @asrauh.bsky.social @giuliotesei.bsky.social & Gustav Hedemark
authors.elsevier.com
Kresten Lindorff-Larsen@lindorfflarsen.bsky.social · last yr.CALVADOS now has parameters for phosphorylated amino acids @asrauh.bsky.social @giuliotesei.bsky.social and Gustav Hedemark used a top-down approach in which we targeted experimental data to derive parameters or phosphorylated serine and threonine doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Protein structure alignment significance is often exaggerated https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.17.665375v1
A few years ago, one could only dream of doing this. It so exciting seeing this work from the @adamrbentham.bsky.social lab. Of course, I am biased by the rice NLR pair and the Magnaporthe effector they chose 😁😁 #2025ISMPMI
Armin Djamei@effectomics.bsky.social · last yr.#2025ISMPMI Agnus Bucknell of the Talbot lab gives an exciting presentation to engineer fungal effectors recognizing immune sensors based on Pik1. Great and clear talk.
AlphaFlex: Accuracy modeling of protein multiple conformations via predicted flexible residues https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.11.664327v1
Thrilled to share our latest preprint! This work started during my PhD and was finished together with @jmadhuprakash.bsky.social. We found a Phytophthora infestans L-shaped effector that bridges a host TOL protein to activated NLRs to suppress immunity! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/15
Ahn Lab is going to MPMI! #2025ISMPMI Hayden Burdett and myself will be attending the MPMI conference in Cologne ⛪ Check out poster P-073 for paired NLR biology, and let's chat about paired NLRs and more!🌱 See you in Cologne 😀 @instmolplantsci.bsky.social
Van der Weg et al. present TopEC, a 3D graph neural network for enzyme function classification. It integrates local structural details and achieves an F-score of 0.72 over 800 classes, outperforming conventional methods on both experimental and predicted structures www.nature.com/articles/s41...
TopEC: prediction of Enzyme Commission classes by 3D graph neural networks and localized 3D protein descriptor - Nature Communications
TopEC, a 3D graph neural network, predicts enzyme functions from local structural features achieving high accuracy (F-score: 0.72) across >800 Enzyme Commission classes. It is robust to binding sit...
nature.com
Our new review in @theplantjournal.bsky.social on synthetic gene circuits is out! I am super proud of this. I hope that it acts as a useful resource for people new to gene circuits. The switch-liker's guide to plant synthetic gene circuits onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The switch‐liker's guide to plant synthetic gene circuits
Synthetic gene circuits have the potential to revolutionise how plants can be engineered by allowing highly customised gene expression patterns to be designed. Gene circuits can sense and integrate m....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
