Fungal pathogens often carry dispensable chromosomes (DCs) that confer a selective advantage in adverse environments or during host infection but can be spontaneously lost under non-selective conditio...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 05 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02499-wEvolution of nutrient cross-feeding between a yeast and oomycete mediates microbial coexistence and leaf microbiome stability.

Bentham Lab, Centre for Programmable Biological Matter, Durham University. Structural biology and de novo protein design applied to host-pathogen interactions, plant immunity, and neglected tropical d...

A prior PLOS Biology study engineered bee gut bacteria to sense their microenvironment. This new study engineers a native honey bee symbiont into a living biosensor for arabinose, revealing its spatia...

To cause rice blast disease, the filamentous fungus Magnaporthe oryzae develops a specialised infection cell called an appressorium, which generates enormous turgor to breach the rice leaf cuticle. Al...

To cause rice blast disease, the filamentous fungus Magnaporthe oryzae develops a specialised infection cell called an appressorium, which generates enormous turgor to breach the rice leaf cuticle. Al...

Pathogens target and degrade the extracellular matrix surrounding plant cells. A central question is how cell wall-derived damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are recognized and integrated to...

Adaptation is assumed to proceed by survival of the fittest. The study shows that mutation bias can drive adaptation via survival of the likeliest, steering bacteria along divergent paths to resistanc...

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...

The blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is the causal agent of the most serious disease of cultivated rice and an emerging threat to wheat production. Controlling blast diseases is therefore critical t...

Nextflow pipeline for reference genome mapping, SNP calling and quality checks on large genome panels

Fungal effectors may have evolved from ancient antimicrobials, shaping plant microbiota and immunity during infection.

Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...

Abstract. Transposable elements (TEs) are found in nearly all eukaryotic genomes. Despite significant advances in the sequencing of genomes, TE resources r

Many plant pathogenic fungi penetrate host surfaces mechanically, using turgor pressure generated by specialized infection cells called appressoria. These appressoria develop semipermeable cell walls ...

Emerging fungal pathogens have detrimental impacts on crops, animals, and humans, however little is known about their transition to a pathogenic lifestyle. This study demonstrates that the transition ...

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Carella Group at the John Innes Centre, working on cutting-edge science in the field of Evo-MPMI (Evolutionary Molecular…