The Department of Plant Biology offers fellowships that support research, scholarship and professional development for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty. These awards recognize exce...

Abstract. Membraneless organelles (MLOs) in eukaryotic cells, such as the nuclear Cajal body (CB), have been notoriously difficult to biochemically isolate

Cold-stress signals are transmitted to chloroplasts and subsequently trigger cold responses through an RAF-like bi-kinase module where cytoplasmic RAF3 and plasma membrane RAF6 translocate to chloropl...

A mechanistic basis for how the hormone salicylic acid promotes transcriptional activation during plant immune responses is described.

Plant plasma membrane proteins are organized into distinct domains; however, the principles that govern this spatial organization are not fully understood. HYPERSENSITIVE-INDUCED REACTION (HIR) protei...

This review focuses on mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation and summarizes how plants regulate and integrate MAPK signaling in modulating plant immune responses. It also examines the ef...

Root vascular pathogens like Fusarium oxysporum (Fo) severely impact agriculture by colonizing the xylem, thereby disrupting the transport of water...

Botrytis cinerea is a necrotrophic plant pathogen with an extremely wide host range. During invasion, the fungus induces rapid host cell death and proliferates in the necrotic tissue. The mechanisms o...

TALEs (transcription activator-like effectors) are an excellent example of how studying pathogen–host interactions can lead to significant biotechnology inventions. TALEs are bacterial effectors that ...

A plant receptor detects caterpillar attack and triggers emission of chemical cues to attract predatory wasps.

Climate warming poses increasing thermal challenges to plants, yet how plasma membrane biophysics contributes to heat adaptation remains poorly understood. In this work, we showed that the malectin-li...

A fungal long non-coding RNA from Magnaporthe oryzae translocates into rice cells to sequester a host microRNA that normally represses PKR1, a negative immunity regulator, thereby facilitating infection and revealing a widespread RNA-based pathogen–host interaction mechanism.

Experiments in Arabidopsis demonstrate that group VII ethylene response factors show differential responses to different stimuli, enabling plants in flood-prone environments to adapt to both submergence-induced hypoxia and reoxygenation upon desubmergence.

This review summarizes how ubiquitination regulates plant receptor kinases by controlling their stability, endocytosis, and activity through E3 ligases, often modulated by receptor kinase phosphoryla...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 20 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02325-3Phytophthora secretes an infection-induced apoplastic lipase, damaging Arabidopsis extracellular vesicles and suppressing plant defence against infection.

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 20 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02329-zMoCox6 is an inner mitochondrial membrane regulator of mitophagy in Magnaporthe oryzae, and targeting it with a small molecule, Pan-RAS-IN-1, suppresses fungal virulence and reduces rice blast disease.

Here, the authors show that rhizobacteria can utilize and detoxify simple coumarins secreted by iron-deficient plants, thereby enhancing their root colonization. This, in turn, hampers plant iron acqu...

The Cas12i-derived nuclease CasY7 system achieved high editing efficiency in rice, maize, and wheat, notably enabling multiplex editing. This establishes CasY7 as a robust CRISPR tool for crop improv...

Plant cell surface receptors have evolved to perceive peptides, proteins, glycans, lipids, and small molecules through diverse ectodomains, integrating these inputs into distinct physiological output....

Time-resolved drone imaging of potato crop development and seed tuber microbiome data can be used to predict potato vigour, or growth potential, in next-season crops in trial fields.

SUMM2, a coiled-coil NLR, promotes the assembly of higher-order resistosome clusters to initiate cell death in plants.

The E3 ubiquitin ligase NLA postively regulates cold tolerance and negatively regulates phosphate uptake in maize, and a genetically engineered variant of this enzyme leads to improved cold ...

Ralstonia solanacearum species complex (RSSC) pathogens cause destructive plant wilt diseases of a wide variety of crops, leading to significant ag...

Abstract. Pathogen adaptability driven by epigenetic processes remains poorly understood and poses a significant challenge to sustainable disease managemen

Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone that orchestrates immune responses against pathogens, including Pseudomonas syringae bacteria. The timing and extent of SA accumulation are tightly controlled...

Chromosome architecture influences Agrobacterium fitness, competitiveness, and virulence, shaping its adaptation and evolution.

Plant roots release exudates to encourage microbiome assembly, which influences the function and stress resilience of plants. How specific exudates drive spatial colonization patterns remains largely ...

The evolutionary success of land plants is tied to their rhizosphere microbiomes. However, the principles governing how bacteria, fungi, and protists assemble and function across wild plants remain un...

Zhang et al. identify STOM, a previously unknown fungal MAMP, and its receptor-co-receptor pair, STOMR/STOMRh. The evolutionary loss of functional STOMRh in monocots restricts immune recognition, whil...

Plants deploy a diverse array of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which perceive microbe-associated molecular patterns to activate immune responses. Leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase subgr...

Gram-negative bacterial pathogens inject effector proteins inside plant cells using specialized secretion systems. These effectors manipulate plant cellular functions and suppress the plant immune s...