📣NEW DISCOVERY: Plant immune receptors can evolve by mimicking effector targets & that insight enables us to engineer a disease-resistance gene that can recognise two major crop pathogens 🌾 www.tsl.ac.uk/news/plants-... @dianagdlc.bsky.social @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social

So proud to see this story finally out!🎉 We added new data since our previous preprint—transgenic barley plants with an engineered immune receptor that fights off two fungal pathogens at once. Short 🧵 and link to the original preprint thread on X👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Molecular mimicry of a pathogen virulence target by a plant immune receptor

Plants and animals respond to pathogen attack by mounting innate immune responses that require intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins. These immune receptors detect pathog...

science.org

Check out our latest work! AlphaFold 3 revealed a transient immune receptor complex that eluded biochemical studies for almost a decade 🤯 We describe a conserved structural logic underlying sensor–helper communication in an NLR immune receptor network 🧵👇

bioRxiv Plant Bio@biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A conserved structural logic underlies sensor-helper NLR communication in the NRC immune receptor network https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.18.725810v1

As an emerging leader in plant innate immunity, we're thrilled to present Mauricio Contreras with a 2027 Early Career Research Award! Alongside advocating for Open Science and preprint review, Mauricio's "activation-and-release" and "NLR resurrection" models are already referenced worldwide.

Excited to attend my 1st ISMPMI conference, and present our work on a paired wheat CNL/MLKL receptor mechanism! 🌾 Come chat to me at my poster on Tuesday, P-050! 📜 If you miss my poster session, I will be talking in: Crop resistance genetics and genomics on Wednesday - 16:25-16:35!

Over the last couple of years I have been writing individual chapters of what I call 𝗔 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 Each chapter covers a specific, basic, but for some reason special and interesting aspect of #PlantScience research. Have a look here 👇🧵

Up and ready! Find me at P-267 today for some molecular evolution and NLR biology! 🥬💻 You can also find the poster and preprint below 👇🏻 #2025ISMPMI

AmirAli Toghani@amiralito.bsky.social · last yr.

Looking forward to meeting friends and colleagues at #2025ISMPMI next week! Find me at P-267 >>> Session 1, Monday, 14th. In the meantime, you can check out my poster on Zenodo :) #openscience zenodo.org/records/1583...

Viral genomes might encode more proteins than we initially thought! Intrigued? Come see my poster on the identification of potentially new ORFs in the potato virus X genome. Tuesday 9:55-11:30, P-266 @geminiteamlab.bsky.social #2025ISMPMI

From lesions to lessons: 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of filamentous plant pathogen genomics. In our new review, we present lessons we learned over the past 2 decades and discuss the future of plant pathogen genomics. Take a first look! apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/...

From Lesions to Lessons: Two Decades of Filamentous Plant Pathogen Genomics | Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions®

Filamentous plant pathogens pose a severe threat to food security. Current estimates suggest up to 23% yield losses to pre- and post-harvest diseases and these losses are projected to increase due to ...

apsjournals.apsnet.org