Helen Brabham

Great to see this recommendation. I would love to see something similar in the sciences: AI co-scientists have great potential for knowledge management and to accelerate research, but funding for discovery science and fair compensation is needed for value generation and for equitable access.

AI can write genomes — how long until it creates synthetic life? The Evo2 genomic language model can generate short genome sequences, but scientists say further advances are needed to write genomes that will work inside living cells.

AI can write genomes — how long until it creates synthetic life? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Building Evo 2: A Frontier DNA Language Model YouTube video by Arc Institute

Evo 2, the largest fully open biological AI model to date, is now published in @nature.com

youtu.be/o_w-E--u7GQ

The rise and fall of peer review Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing

This is a really thoughtful and interesting article on our current #PeerReview system in #AcademicPublishing by Adam Mastroianni.

Absolutely worth the read. And you can then spend even more time reading the really interesting follow-up articles.

#Science #SciencePublishing #ResearchPublishing

Pathogen-induced red pigmentation uncovers a conserved floral defense in Asteraceae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.24.707787v1

Have you ever wondered 🤔... Does phenotypic variance respond to environmental perturbation? Does it have a genetic basis? Are mean and variance regulating loci exposed to different selection pressures? These and more questions are explored in our new preprint 🔥

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Finding one mutation that improves a protein is hard. Finding five that work together is exponentially harder.

Today in @science.org, Hsu and Konermann labs present MULTI-evolve, a lab-in-the-loop framework that does it in just one machine learning-guided round.

Global status of genome editing versus transgenesis legislation in plants and the current EU situation - npj Science of Plants npj Science of Plants - Global status of genome editing versus transgenesis legislation in plants and the current EU situation

🌍 A new study maps how the 196 UN member states regulate #NGTs.
It outlines 8 differing regulatory approaches and finds that countries allowing transgenic plants are about 23% more likely to approve #GenomeEditing #CRISPR
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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!

Maize Hybrids Exhibit Reduction in an Elicitor-Triggered Defense Response Compared to Their Inbred Parents | Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions® Heterosis is the increased performance of hybrids relative to their parental genotypes. Heterosis for growth may be mediated by underlying traits, including traits affecting host-microbe interactions....

🚨New Publication Alert🚨

Authors: Asher Hudson, Maggie Wagner, and Peter Balint-Kurti

Maize Hybrids Exhibit Reduction in an Elicitor-Triggered Defense Response Compared to Their Inbred Parents | #MPMI apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/...

Fig. 2 (shortened, full legend in paper): Structurally characterized M. oryzae effectors in complex with the HMA or HMA-like domains of host target proteins and ID-NLRs. Crystal structures of (A) AVR-PikF with the HMA-like domain of OsHIPP19 from rice (7B1I) (Maidment et al., 2021); (B) APikL2A with the HMA-like domain of sHMA25 from foxtail millet (7NLJ) (Bentham et al., 2021); (C) Pwl2 with the HMA domain of OsHIPP43 from rice (8R7D) (Zdrzałek et al., 2024); (D) AVR-PikD with the HMA-like ID of Pikp-1 from rice (5A6W) (Maqbool et al., 2015); (E) AVR-Pia with the HMA-like ID of Pikp-1 (6Q76) (Varden et al., 2019); (F) AVR1-CO39 with the HMA-like ID of RGA5 from rice (5ZNG) (Guo et al., 2018). Complexes are displayed such that the HMA/HMA-like domains are in equivalent orientations. Domains from HPP/HIPP host targets are coloured light green. Domains from ID-NLRs are coloured dark green.

⚙️🦠 REVIEW 🦠⚙️

Turley & Faulkner explore the function of plant heavy metal-associated domain-containing proteins and speculate about their functions at plasmodesmata by drawing from plant–pathogen interaction studies.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 Christine Faulkner

Genomes are fascinating!

Please share!
PhD position (4 years) available in my group @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We look for candidates with solid aptitude in computer science to cross disciplines and use cutting edge imaging to understand host infection by destructive plant pathogens.
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

1/12 I'm ecstatic to share my preprint on legume NLR tissue expression! We investigated the NLRomes of 28 legumes + 4 outgroups, examining tissue expression across 7 legume species. Paper thread below 🧵👇
@thesainsburylab.bsky.social @itqbnova.bsky.social
🔗https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.25.701577

This article is now published! academic.oup.com/nargab/artic...
We’ve added a few new analyses. First off, we show that, while gene presence absence variation (PAV) scales with evolutionary distance in both plants and animals, the base level and rate of accrual are both twice as high in plants.

Defence Recognition of a Stripe Rust Fungal Effector Is Uncoupled from Disease Outcomes in Wheat | Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions® Plant resistance (R) and pathogen avirulence (Avr) gene interactions are central to pathogen recognition and disease resistance in crops. Functional characterisation of recognised Avr effectors of Puc...

Our first wheat stripe rust avirulence (?!) effector is published "Defence Recognition of a Stripe Rust Fungal Effector Is Uncoupled from Disease Outcomes in Wheat" apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/.... It is not what we expected but this is the most fun part about science. 1/n

Congrats @marco-guerreiro.bsky.social. @estukenbrock.bsky.social and colleagues on this exciting study linking codon optimization and adaptive translation to lifestyle transitions in a group of fungi.

Looking forward to kicking off 2026 with the International Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG)!

Catch me Saturday 10th January at 8am in the New Approaches for Developing Disease Resistance in Cereals session organised by Dr. Nidhi Rawat. 🌱🌾

If you're around, I'd love to chat science! 👩‍🔬

Towards a quantitative view of NLR evolution in genome space -- check out where we think the field of #NLR #evolution research is heading in this review led by Luzie Wingen and Aurélien Tellier.
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
#plantscience

Ancient MAX Effector Variants of a Fungal Pathogen Evade Apoplastic Immunity in Apple Venturia inaequalis is an Ascomycota fungus responsible for apple scab, the main disease in apple orchards. During infection, the pathogen colonizes the subcuticular space and secretes hundreds of eff...

🧬 New preprint on fungal effector 🍄🍎

We identify AvrRvi6, the first AVR from Venturia inaequalis.

AvrRvi6 is a MAX effector with apoplastic activity, expanding the functional landscape of this major effector family.

📄 bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Genomic Insights into Historical Adaptation of Three Key Fungal Plant Pathogens Abstract. Fungal culture collections hold a wealth of historical isolates that could be used to study fungal evolution over the past decades, an era that c

Alkemade, @timbarra.bsky.social et al. did temporal association analysis on three major fungal crop pathogens collected between 1956 and 2023, identifying genes linked to fungicide resistance and stress responses as frequent sites of adaptation.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf241

#genome #evolution

A guide to designing cell-surface receptors in plants Cell-surface receptors perceive environmental cues and trigger appropriate responses. In plants, these receptors comprise ectodomain, juxta-membrane, …

We wrote a review on the mᴏdular properties of plant cell-surface receptors, and how this knowledge can be used to reprogram and engineer them:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fig. 1. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) images of Aegilops cylindrica leaves infected with IPO323 (incompatible) and Zt469 (compatible) Zymoseptoria tritici isolates. Microscopic images from CLSM analysis using maximum projections of image z-stacks. Cell nuclei and plant tissue are visible in purple, and fungal hyphae are in green. Except for the 4 days postinfection (dpi) sample of the incompatible interaction, only fungal hyphae growing within the plant tissue are shown. Letters indicate which infection stage is represented by the images. Time points listed in purple were chosen for RNA sequencing analysis

Rune Hansen et al. reported that the substomatal cavity is a crucial check point where the devastating Septoria blotch (Zymoseptoria tritici) infection is stopped. Understanding this mechanism is key to future wheat immunity. Learn more: https://doi.org/10.1094/MPMI-11-24-0147-R

Battling crop diseases without borders | John Innes Centre DEWAS is one of the world’s largest crop pathogen surveillance and advisory systems, protecting wheat productivity in food vulnerable areas of East Africa and South Asia.

GetGenome is proud to partner with @johninnescentre.bsky.social , @cimmyt.bsky.social , @gatesfoundation.bsky.social and #DEWAS to advance a bottom-up, equitable approach to access genomics 🌾 🧬

“Battling crop diseases without borders” www.jic.ac.uk/blog/battlin...

Scikit-bio: a fundamental Python library for biological omic data analysis - Nature Methods Nature Methods - Scikit-bio: a fundamental Python library for biological omic data analysis

The scikit-bio paper in online in Nature Methods! Many thanks to our collaborators, community contributors and reviewers! We couldn’t have done it without you. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Bioinformatics #OpenSource

Co-option of transcription factors drives evolution of quantitative disease resistance against a necrotrophic pathogen Quantitative disease resistance in a wild tomato genotype evolved through species-specific regulatory network rewiring, with an ancient transcription facto

Did you ever wonder how #Solanum plants evolved quantitative disease resistance/ #QDR?
I am really excited to share our recently published manuscript, where we tried to contribute to addressing this question!

🌱https://tinyurl.com/2vz23ck6

Dual recognition of structurally unrelated mildew effectors underlies the broad-spectrum resistance of Pm3e in wheat Broad-spectrum resistance genes are highly valuable for sustainable crop protection, yet the molecular basis of their activity is often unknown. The Pm3 allelic series in wheat encodes NLR receptors t...

A wheat NLR conferring broad-spectrum resistance against powdery mildew by recognizing two structurally diverse AVR effectors. Interested? Check out our newest preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Electrostatic changes enabled the diversification of an exocyst subunit via protein complex escape - Nature Plants The evolutionary diversification of an exocyst subunit was enabled by electrostatic shifts leading to its dissociation from the ancestral complex.

My main work as postdoc @plantophagy.bsky.social lab in @gmivienna.bsky.social is out in @natplants.nature.com 🌱🎉

We asked how can protein complexes diversify without compromising their function and explored this question using the plant #exocyst complex.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

'Identifying the safe operating space for food systems'

Highly relevant new paper by Sofie te Wierik et al. in Nature Food www.nature.com/articles/s43...

The paper shows: i) food systems are the single-largest pressure across Earth system processes, ii) all food system boundaries are transgressed

Postdoc position in my lab in Cologne starting early next year or latest in spring to get this exciting project started.

jobportal.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun...