The blast fungus forms a force-generating appressorium for plant infection. Eseola et al. show how individual spore cells adopt distinct fates, trafficking organelles to the appressorium or undergoing...

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...

Josh Bennett, a John Innes Centre student completed his PIPS with Resurrect Bio, a plant biotech start-up, working on immune systems of economically important crop species, based in London.

A new growing technique which could help save the ash.

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Scientific protocol associated with:  Brock RE, Courtney C, Penfield S, and Wells R (2026), Larval antibiosis to cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala) is absent within oilseed rape (Bras...

We screened a panel of 98 Brassicaceae genotypes (97 Brassica napus and 1 Sinapis alba) for cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala) larval antibiosis. We found limited evidence for antibi...

We screened a panel of 98 Brassicaceae genotypes (97 Brassica napus and 1 Sinapis alba) for cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala) larval antibiosis. We found limited evidence for antibi...

Plants secrete a variety of proteases as a defense response during infection by microbial pathogens. However, the relationship between their catalytic activities and antimicrobial functions remains largely unknown. Particularly, few biologically relevant substrates of these proteases have been identified. Huanglongbing (HLB) has been a major threat to the citrus industry worldwide. The HLB-associated bacterium, "Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus" (Las), was previously shown to deploy an inhibitor of papain-like cysteine proteases (PLCPs) to promote disease in citrus. In this study, we identified an outer membrane protein (OMP) of Las, LasOMP1, as a substrate of the citrus PLCP CsRD21a. LasOMP1 is one of the most highly expressed genes in Las. CsRD21a cleaves LasOMP1 and produces cleaved peptide products, which could be detected in vitro and in HLB-diseased citrus plants. We found that CsRD21a targets the N-terminal portion of LasOMP1, potentially at an extracellular loop region. Importantly, transgenic sweet orange overexpressing CsRD21a showed reduced Las populations and improved plant growth, highlighting that engineering this protease is a promising strategy to enhance HLB resistance in citrus. Together, our work reveals a pathogen-derived substrate of plant PLCPs and suggests bacterial OMPs may be direct targets of plant defense.

Septin GTPases are essential cytoskeletal regulators that organize membranes and scaffold protein complexes to control cytokinesis, polarity, and morphogenesis. How septins execute these functions remains poorly understood, and comprehensive, stage-resolved interaction maps are lacking. Here, we define a quantitative, time-resolved septin interactome in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae using immunoprecipitation coupled to mass spectrometry. We map more than 350 interactors of septins Sep3, Sep4, Sep5 and Sep6, revealing a dynamic network required for appressorium-mediated plant infection. Beyond canonical roles in cytoskeletal organisation and polarity, septins associate with proteins linked to membrane remodelling, metabolism, and virulence, deployed during host invasion. Integration with ultra-high-throughput yeast two-hybrid analysis defines a high-confidence septin interactome and identifies previously uncharacterised factors, including Msi1, a BAR domain protein required for invasive growth. Together, these findings establish septins as dynamic organisers of infection-related processes and provide a framework for understanding how cytoskeletal scaffolds coordinate fungal pathogenesis.

Dr Myriam Charpentier has received a prestigious international award from the Academia Europaea for her groundbreaking research into plant-microbe interactions…

Robinson et al. identify pathogenic Pseudomonas viridiflava in wild Marchantia polymorpha liverworts and interrogate the mechanisms enabling virulence in non-flowering and flowering plants. Their resu...

Research group says discovery could lead to new type of environmentally friendly farming

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