New pre-print from the @saskiahogenhout.bsky.social lab We (@qunliu07.bsky.social et al.) show that the aphid effector protein CathB6, in addition to suppressing plant immunity via EDS1, also alters the regulation of chloroplast-nuclear signalling to maintain photosynthetic gene expression. 1/n

bioRxiv Plant Bio@biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 2d ago

The aphid effector CathB6 suppresses EDS1-dependentimmunity and rewires MORF2-GUN1-GLK signalling tosustain host cellular homeostasis in Arabidopsis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.10.743731v1

❗ French agriculture is experiencing one of the worst nationwide agricultural disasters since 1945 due to drought. 🔻 corn -41% 🔻 sorghum - 61% (promoted as drought tolerant! 🤔 ) 🔻 wheat -31% 🔻 potato -42% 🔻 legumes -30 to -70% A huge challenge for all. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

La situation agricole française n’est plus au bord du gouffre, comme elle pouvait l’être en 2022 : cette fois-ci, elle est dans le gouffre. Il n’est désormais plus inconcevable que nous soyons en… | S...

La situation agricole française n’est plus au bord du gouffre, comme elle pouvait l’être en 2022 : cette fois-ci, elle est dans le gouffre. Il n’est désormais plus inconcevable que nous soyons en trai...

linkedin.com

@loreament.bsky.social & Saupe suggest that fungal NOD-like receptors evolve under diversity-enhancing mechanisms and display selective signatures consistent with a general immune function. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... #societyjournal #genome #evolution

NOD-Like Receptor Genes Undergo Diversity-Enhancing Evolution in a Fungal Species Complex

Abstract. Fungi harbor diverse arrays of genes encoding NOD-like receptors (NLRs), key intracellular immune proteins found in plants, animals, and bacteria

doi.org

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

Job opportunity! 🌱 At KWS Einbeck (Germany), we have an exciting opening for a Group Lead for Molecular Trait Analysis & Genomics. 👉 Read more & apply online: jobs.kws.com/job/Einbeck-...

🌍🌾Global hunger dropped to 645 million in 2025, but progress is slow & uneven. Africa remains the hardest hit, with over half facing food insecurity. FAO urges faster investment & stronger agrifood systems Progress is possible, but not guaranteed #plantscience @fao.org www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiote...

UN Releases Global Report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition

The number of hungry individuals continues to decrease for the third year in a row, showing progress is attainable. However, the progress recorded was unstable, unevenly distributed, and insufficient ...

isaaa.org

Huge congrats to @alicelaigle.bsky.social for driving this work - excited to share this preprint! Comparative analyses reveal rapid turnover and emergence of transitory 3D genome architectures in the fungal kingdom www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #fungi #bioinformatics #evolution #preprint

Comparative analyses reveal rapid turnover and emergence of transitory 3D genome architectures in the fungal kingdom

The three-dimensional architecture of genomes plays major roles in biological processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. The architecture of genomes has evolved substantially with distinct...

biorxiv.org

🧬🌾IDRs can restrain chromatin regulators, not just enable them. Deleting ALKBH5's IDR redirects it to chromatin, boosting root growth in Arabidopsis & rice yield A conserved mechanism with breeding promise #plantscience @natgenet.nature.com @plantresearch.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Intrinsically disordered regions restrain genomic targeting of RNA and histone demethylases in mammals and plants - Nature Genetics

Intrinsically disordered regions impose regulatory restraints on gene-activating demethylases, limiting chromatin engagement and preserving genomic stability. This function is a key determinant of the...

nature.com

🧬🌾Synthetic plant immune receptors (SPIRs) can be programmed to recognize viral, bacterial, fungal, and oomycete proteins. AI-guided design and in planta evolution boost specificity and activity. Transgenic plants with SPIRs showed disease resistance. #plantscience 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

Time-dependent transcriptomic changes following protoplast isolation in plants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.14.738454v1

A tomato MIK2‐clade receptor is involved in the perception of a Fusarium‐derived elicitor - Maroschek - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A tomato <fc>MIK2</fc>‐clade receptor is involved in the perception of a <fi>Fusarium</fi>‐derived elicitor

Fusarium elicitor responsivness and MIK2-clade proteins are conserved across plant families.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.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

New @cam.ac.uk feature on the wonderful work in the Howe Lab to develop biocells that harness the chemistry of algae to power small devices: www.cam.ac.uk/stories/camb...

A truly green way to power our devices

At a time when ‘being green’ matters more than ever, a team of Cambridge researchers has devised a way to power electronic devices that’s taken the brief quite literally.

cam.ac.uk

University of Cambridge@cam.ac.uk · last mo.

Cambridge researchers have created a device that could replace disposable batteries with a cleaner source of energy 🔋 A team at @cambiochem.bsky.social are using process of photosynthesis in algae to generate continuous electricity, without harming the organism. Read more: https://bit.ly/4oXhs8k

Who would have guessed!? 🙄 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why paying peer reviewers works, according to a journal’s editor-in-chief

A biology journal that paid peer reviewers found that the approach cut the time to a first editorial decision by 85% and maintained high-quality reviews.

nature.com

Our latest work on immune receptor engineering for enhanced pathogen recognition is out in @theplantcell.bsky.social academic.oup.com/plcell/artic... #NLRs #Effectors #Exo70

Engineering an Exo70 integrated domain of a barley NLR for improved blast resistance

Engineering the barley NLR RGH2 enhances recognition of blast pathogen effectors from rice and wheat, leading to improved disease resistance.

academic.oup.com

New Preprint! We identified 20 new type II-secreted effectors from Xanthomonas euvesicatoria and show that they help bacteria feed and remodel plant cell walls during infection. Proud of my team at #ZMBP and collaborators for making this possible! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Defining the Xanthomonas euvesicatoria type II-secreted effector arsenal: core nutritional functions and effector diversity

The type II secretion (T2S) system is conserved across the Xanthomonas lineage, yet its contributions to pathogenicity and secreted protein repertoires are poorly defined. We demonstrate that T2S syst...

biorxiv.org

A mind-bending application of AI and AI agents to develop and interrogate plant development and response networks by accessing all historical literature on plant gene functions. A staggering AI tour de force from the UQ node of @coeplantsuccess.bsky.social 🧪 #plantscience sciety.org/articles/act...

FLASH-P: Turning decades of biology into accurate causal networks with AI agents

Mechanistic networks that encode causal regulatory logic can predict the effects of genetic and environmental perturbations but constructing them is a bottleneck in systems biology because the relevan...

sciety.org

10 colour palettes I reach for in research charts — curated, and most are colourblind-safe. Categorical + sequential: Okabe-Ito, Paul Tol, Tableau 10, viridis, cividis, magma. Skip default tab10 and rainbow/jet. Which do you swear by? Anything I'm missing? #DataViz #ColorPalette #SciComm

Paradoxical gene regulation explained by competition for genomic sites doi.org/10.1101/2025...

I absolutely love BHL! @biodivlibrary.bsky.social Here's an article from 2014 about my love for it, with links to classics in plant physiology 💚 blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2014/10/expl... And the treasures and drawings it holds are AI-free 😀 PS - I just donated to support it.

Biodiversity Heritage Library@biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BHL is featured in @theguardian.com's Age of Extinction series. The article highlights the extraordinary value of BHL and the urgent need to ensure it remains free and open into the future. Please read and share: www.theguardian.com/environment/... 🧪 🌎 📖 🔗 🐟 💚

🌾🧬Immune receptor MLA3 mimics a pathogen target to detect effectors. Engineered SR50 recognizes two cereal pathogens in barley. A strategy for multiple disease resistance #plantscience @dianagdlc.bsky.social @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social @thesainsburylab.bsky.social 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

Don’t reach for ChatGPT Images or Nano Banana as your first option when creating scientific images There are multiple free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations. #plantscience @stephenturner.us blog.stephenturner.us/p/free-open-...

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations

Phylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics

blog.stephenturner.us

Potential unlocked: an atlas of cloned wheat genes for genome engineering and breeding 🌾 A #TansleyInsight by Abdulrahman Alhabsi, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🌿🧬 Large duplications create overlapping expression. Small duplications create asymmetric divergence. Dosage sensitive genes stay conserved #plantscience @theplantcell.bsky.social @almeidasilvaf.bsky.social @yvdp.bsky.social @aspbofficial.bsky.social academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

Gene expression divergence following gene and genome duplications in spatially resolved plant transcriptomes

After gene and genome duplications, expression divergence across cell types is not random, and it can be explained by a combination of gene age, gene funct

academic.oup.com

From outside, basic research looks like "a waste" like meaningless navel gazing to understand stuff that "doesn't matter to the average person." Read this thread to see how smushing jellyfish through cheesecloth has literally overturned what's possible in biology and medicine.

TK (Takashi DY) Kozai@bioniclab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

Proud to share our new paper on how prion-like fungal effectors target plastids and modulate host metabolism during root symbiosis. Exciting collaborative work uncovering PEPSI effectors and the interaction of one of them with DXR in plants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... bsky.app/profile/eell...

Ernesto Llamas@eellamas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

1/ Happy to share our latest work, now on bioRxiv! 🌱🍄 We explore how Serendipita indica effectors target root plastids and modulate plastidial metabolism through prion-like domains. bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #plastids #plantmicrobe #chloroplasts #plants

Host specificity in cereal rust fungi is mediated by a conserved glycoside hydrolase family https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.20.726508v1

Two papers in Nature present AI systems that can assist throughout multiple processes involved in scientific research. The systems are designed to assist researchers in accelerating scientific discovery, not to replace them. go.nature.com/4tFHspz go.nature.com/3RQzXyL #Academicsky 🧪

How do plants respond to wounding? Well it it's not too dissimilar to how they respond to heat. We found that plants utilize the HSFA1 transcription factors to rapidly induce wound-induced regeneration genes after injury. @keikosugimoto.bsky.social @deveylderlab.bsky.social @wigge.bsky.social

Wounding activates the HSFA1 transcription factors to promote cellular reprogramming in Arabidopsis

The HEAT SHOCK FACTOR A1 transcription factors rapidly accumulate in the nucleus after wounding and directly activate regenerative pathways in plants.

doi.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