Dor Russ
@dorruss12.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University. I research plants, microbes, and their fascinating interactions.
Non-canonical gene amplifications facilitate adaptive evolution in bacteria www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Non-canonical gene amplifications facilitate adaptive evolution in bacteria - Nature Microbiology
Transposon-associated amplifications are dominated by a previously underappreciated architecture, where the transposon is found only between, not flanking, the amplicons. These amplifications facilita...
nature.com
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...
Plant pathogens cleave 2'cADPR to suppress TIR immune signaling
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...
biorxiv.org
How do pathogens disarm plant immunity? We discovered a widespread strategy used by plant bacterial pathogens: they directly cleave a conserved immune signaling molecule produced by plant immune receptors. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
A great opportunity to work with the fantastic @natanellae.bsky.social !!!
Natanella Illouz-Eliaz@natanellae.bsky.social · 3mo agoExcited to share that I will be opening my lab this fall at the @weizmanninstitute.bsky.social in the Department of Plant & Environmental Sciences! I am looking for postdocs interested in plant biology, stress biology, and single-cell technologies. #PlantBiology #SingleCell #Epigenomics #Postdoc
Excited to share that I will be opening my lab this fall at the @weizmanninstitute.bsky.social in the Department of Plant & Environmental Sciences! I am looking for postdocs interested in plant biology, stress biology, and single-cell technologies. #PlantBiology #SingleCell #Epigenomics #Postdoc
Just published: Breaking the Pattern with AlphaFold: Introducing the Structural Novelty Index AlphaFold has transformed how we predict protein structures. But sometimes most interesting discoveries come from asking a different question: which proteins break the pattern? medium.com/p/breaking-t...
When organisms look similar, you can use a tag to tell them apart. We wanted to tag our collection of diverse Sphingomonas bacteria with DNA barcodes to distinguish them. We planned to use Tn7, until we saw new reports about CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs).
Excited to share our new preprint, a project initiated during my postdoc in the @stanfordstomata.bsky.social, on how plants encode environmental responsiveness in development 🌱 We use tomato to dissect how stomatal production is tuned by climate inputs via cis-regulatory variation in SPCH
biorxiv.org
🌱 “To twine or not to twine?” Preprint 🪩 Plants use inherent circular movements (circumnuations) for active sensing of support mechanical stability (eg whisking 🐭), twining occurs at a torque threshold. Heroic experiments by Amir Ohad, fancy simulations @amirporat.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/2syh4ny3
What if plant immunity doesn’t stop bacteria from arriving - but from staying? Excited to share our new Dangl Lab paper (doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2535583123), asking a fundamental co-evolutionary question: which flagellar function is targeted by plant immunity? #Coevolution #Plant-Microbiome #PNAS 🧵1/8
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
doi.org
Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens! Read it in Science dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie... @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @hhmi-science.bsky.social
Important work in plant genomics by my good friend Idan Efroni in collab with the Zach Lippman
Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU)@slcuplants.bsky.social · 5mo agoHiding in plain sight! 2.3M conserved non-coding sequences traced back 300M years across 284 plant species Ground-breaking study out in First Release @science.org from labs of @madelaineb.bsky.social, @idane.bsky.social & Zach Lippman ▶️ doi.org/10.1126/scie... ▶️ www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/hiding-...
We love a SynCom when they reliably mimic natural microbiomes. New work from @fredebak.bsky.social shows that our SynCom mimics the temporal dynamics of field-grown wheat - but only for the cultivar from which the SynCom was built. Check out the details! academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...
Synthetic bacterial community colonizes wheat roots grown in soil and mimics the assembly pattern of a field community in a cultivar dependent manner
Abstract. The root microbiome is important for plant development. The impact of the root microbiome is the result of multiple complex interactions among mi
academic.oup.com
1/11 🔥 New preprint alert 🔥 We wanted to know what plants in the wild really care about. So we asked them 🎤. Here is what we learned: “Biotic-response networks are an important organizer of the transcriptome in wild Arabidopsis thaliana populations” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A new paper from @dorruss12.bsky.social and Jeff Dangl on two flagellins in plant-associated Sphingomonas used for motility or host colonization. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Specialization of independently acquired flagellar FliC proteins in plant-associated Sphingomonas balances swimming and immunogenicity
Plants monitor their environment for microbial invaders using pattern-recognition receptors that detect microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs). Flagellin, the main component of bacterial flagellum, contains the flg22 epitope recognized by the plant immune receptor FLS2. Immune recognition can create an evolutionary conflict, requiring bacteria to balance flagellar function and immune evasion. Here, we show that plant-associated Sphingomonads resolve this constraint by partitioning two flagellar functions, motility and colonization, across two divergent and independently acquired flagellin genes. Comparative genomics revealed widespread coexistence of FliC proteins expressing either an immunogenic variant (FliC-H) or a non-immunogenic variant (FliC-L). The non-immunogenic FliC-L is necessary and sufficient for full directional swimming, whereas FliC-H is dispensable for swimming, but sufficient for full attachment and colonization. Flagellin expression patterns mirror these functions. Thus, FLS2 recognizes the flagellar variant required for colonization rather than motility, potentially restricting colonizing bacteria from entering internal leaf and root tissues. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Molecular Biology Organization, https://ror.org/04wfr2810, ALTF 743-2019 U.S. National Science Foundation, https://ror.org/021nxhr62, IOS-2416244 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, https://ror.org/006w34k90, Jefferey L. Dangl Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, https://ror.org/01h531d29, 532852-2019 Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, https://ror.org/004hzzk67, 2021.0102
biorxiv.org
RNA splicing generates a functionally specialized Rep protein isoform in geminiviruses — enabling timely control of the viral cycle. Strikingly, similar strategies might have evolved in DNA viruses infecting different kingdoms: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Spearheaded by @delphinem-p.bsky.social!
New review from P Genschik’s team in @jxbotany.bsky.social 🧬 A fresh look at the huge diversity and functions of plant F-box proteins. 👉 Open questions & new perspectives for 🌱 biology. ▶️https://academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jxb/erag074/8475508?redirectedFrom=fulltext
The ISME20 abstract submission deadline has been extended to 22 February. Microbial ecologists worldwide are invited to submit abstracts for oral, short talk, or poster presentations and contribute to the ISME20 programme. isme-microbes.org/isme20-abstr... #ISME20 #MicrobialEcology
Proximity between microbes can hold a lot of information about how they interact. Really cool study from @harriswang.bsky.social showing how Spatial Sequencing can be used to deduce more from the microbial world by understanding physical proximity. Really cool work! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
SAMPL-seq reveals micron-scale spatial hubs in the human gut microbiome - Nature Microbiology
Split-And-pool Metagenomic Plot-sampling sequencing (SAMPL-seq) can be applied to complex microbial communities to reveal spatial co-localization of microbes at the micron scale.
nature.com
1/2 "All T6SS-inducing regulators are equal, but some regulators are more equal than others". Preprint 🚨: We use #Vibrio to show that #T6SS activation by regulator manipulation may result in the expression of different effector repertoires, affecting toxicity 🦠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A new paper from the lab on virus-like particles called eCISs www.nature.com/articles/s41... How bacteria evolved thousands of precision nanoinjectors? Some bacteria don’t secrete toxins — they inject them using phage-derived machines called extracellular contractile injection systems (eCISs).
A comprehensive catalogue of receptor-binding domains in extracellular contractile injection systems - Nature Communications
Extracellular contractile injection systems (eCISs) are bacteriophage tail-derived toxin delivery complexes that are present in many prokaryotes. Here, the authors present an analysis of eCIS tail fib...
nature.com
Preprint: Here we report a glass bead-based system suitable for the *simultaneous monitoring* of Arabidopsis root exudate and root microbiome dynamics. Teaser: some link between glucosinolates ~ SynCom composition. Happy reading. Credits to Charlotte Joller et al.! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Check out our new preprint using 30 SynComs covering a phylogenetic diversity gradient, we uncover many interesting strain and community features involved in seed to seedling bacterial transmission 🧫🌱 @emersys-irhs.bsky.social in the SUCSEED project @inrae-dpt-spe.bsky.social
Gontran Arnault@garnault.bsky.social · 6mo ago🌱 New preprint with @microbialmarie.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Bacterial Strain Identity and Community Composition Drive the Seed-to-Seedling Microbiota Assembly We explore which strain traits and community features explain successful bacterial transmission from seed to seedling.⬇️
Hey y’all, New paper out from the lab in Microbial Genomics, starting down the rabbit hole of IS elements in Paeudomonas syringae www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
Independent, ongoing clade-specific expansions of IS5 elements in Pseudomonas syringae
Insertion sequence (IS) elements are transposable regions of DNA present in a majority of bacterial genomes. It is hypothesized that differences in distributions of IS elements across bacterial strain...
microbiologyresearch.org
Result 1) you can see from complete genomes that there’s been multiple independent expansions of IS5 and we don’t quite know why Result 2) ~50% of the (>100 copies) of IS5 elements differ in location between nearly identical genomes Result 3) IS5 from can hotwire gene expression
Don't miss Natanella Illouz-Eliaz' (Salk Institute) Community Dissemination of Arabidopsis Knowledge Award presentation “The World Around Us: Two Parallel Paths in Life"! youtu.be/Lqatc-yUpmY?... @natanellae.bsky.social
Viral NblA proteins negatively affect oceanic cyanobacterial photosynthesis www.nature.com/articles/s41... this project was led by @omernadel.bsky.social and is a joint work between the labs of @bejalab.bsky.social, Debbie Lindell and Oded Kleifeld from @biologytechnion.bsky.social
the sun is shining through the clouds in the sky above the ocean
ALT: the sun is shining through the clouds in the sky above the ocean
media.tenor.com
🚨We’re hiring! Please help spread the word! Our lab at @TheSainsburyLab is recruiting a pre-doctoral intern to work on plant immunity research. Ideal for those who are planning to pursue a PhD and seeking research experience. tatsuyanobori.com
The Sainsbury Laboratory@thesainsburylab.bsky.social · 8mo ago📣 VACANCY: Predoctoral Intern in the Nobori group @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social Join the team to work on plant immunity research at single-cell and spatial resolution 🌱 Apply online, deadline 26 Jan 2026 www.tsl.ac.uk/working-at-t... #PlantSciJobs #PlantScience #STEMJobs
Preprint: Systematic discovery of TIR-based immune signaling systems in bacteria Conservation of TIR-derived signals accross the tree of life! We found bacterial TIR immune systems that signal via canonical cADPR (like in humans) and 2'cADPR (a plant immune signal). Documented 11 Thoeris types
Erez Yirmiya@erezyirmiya.bsky.social · 8mo agoI’m happy to share our new preprint! We uncovered the full diversity of bacterial TIR-based antiviral immune signaling, massively expanded the known diversity of Thoeris systems, and revealed conservation of TIR-derived immune signals across the tree of life. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...