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Lukas Kunz

@lukas-kunz.bsky.social
106 followers 89 following 19 posts

Postdoc in the lab of Thomas Wicker at University of Zurich Interested in molecular plant pathology, fungal & cereal genetics and genomics. Passionate hunter of avirulence genes.

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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Isabel saur @izzysaurlab.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Great to present a major update to our manuscript: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... In collaboration with @grandpahiro.bsky.social, @sara-stolze.bsky.social, Matthieu Platre & the teams of Götz Hensel & Gunther Döhlemann we demonstrate that….. (1/x)
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Max Jordan @maxljordan.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Really excited to share our new manuscript on how the #NLR protein #AfsR regulates #Streptomyces antibiotic production - and how we can use its similarity to plant NLR immune receptors to enhance this production! 📄🧵 (1/17) @johninnescentre.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
A conserved NLR activation switch governs global transcriptional control of antibiotic biosynthesis in Streptomyces
Nucleotide-binding and oligomerization domain-like receptors (NLRs) are conserved molecular switches that regulate innate immunity across diverse domains of life. While best known for their roles in i...
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Our lab is looking for PhD students to join us in 2027 🎓🎉 The projects can be structured around our research directions: - Transposable element dynamics - Fungal pangenomics - ML/language model genomics applications - Pathogen adaptation More here pathogen-genomics.org ("Jobs") and please share! 🙏
pathogen-genomics.org
Evolutionary genomics of pathogens
Croll lab at University of Neuchatel. The lab of Daniel Croll wants to understand how pathogens evolve to cause disease. For this, we mainly focus on major crop pathogens to unravel mechanisms of rapi...
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Sophien Kamoun @kamounlab.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
“Wheat is getting pounded” You know it’s serious when the NYT devotes half its front page to food and agriculture #Wheat #Agriculture #FoodSecurity #PlantSci
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Zoe Bernasconi @zoebernasconi.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I am super excited to finally share our article on the identification of AvrWTK4, the first wheat powdery mildew Avr recognised by a tandem kinase protein thanks to an integrated HMA-like domain 🍄🌾 check it out! ➡️ doi.org/10.1038/s414...
doi.org
An HMA-like integrated domain in the wheat tandem kinase WTK4 recognises an RNase-like pathogen effector - Nature Communications
The wheat powdery mildew avirulence effector AvrWTK4 is recognised by the integrated HMA-like domain of the tandem kinase resistance protein WTK4. Wheat powdery mildew evades from WTK4-mediated recogn...
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Josh Bennett @joshwbennett.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I am really excited to share the first chapter of my PhD, where we characterise a genetically linked NLR/MLKL pair underpinning the Rwt3 resistance locus in wheat! With yet another KFP involved in monocot immunity 🌾 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Team Thomma @teamthomma.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
📣 New preprint! 🧵 Fantastic work led by @antonkraege.bsky.social Fact: Cerato-platanins are everywhere in fungi. Found across the fungal kingdom, implicated in everything from development to virulence to immune activation. But what do they *actually* do? We finally found the answer 👇
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Ralph Hückelhoven @huckelhovenr.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
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/...
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
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.
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Mauricio Contreras @mpcontreras.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
As seen on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social: our story on how the dreaded late blight pathogen hijacks a helper NLR pathway is now out in its final form! 🎉 Meet AVRcap1b: the two-faced effector 🧵👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
A potato late blight pathogen effector interacts with ENTH-domain protein TOL9a and an activated helper NLR to suppress immunity
A plant pathogen effector suppresses an activated helper NLR via a host ENTH domain–containing protein, NbTOL9a.
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Diana Gómez De La Cruz @dianagdlc.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
So proud to see this story finally out!🎉 We added new data since our previous preprint—transgenic barley plants with an engineered immune receptor that fights off two fungal pathogens at once. Short 🧵 and link to the original preprint thread on X👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
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...
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Isabel saur @izzysaurlab.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
We have an open PhD position in our Mol. Biochemistry of Plant-Microbe Interactions Lab Saurlab.com. Please see details below, share and consider applying. jobportal.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun...
jobportal.uni-koeln.de
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Eva Stukenbrock @estukenbrock.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Many pathogens that infect wild plants are close relatives of crop pathogens. Important model systems for studying plant diseases. Check out the special issue on wild plant pathosystems published in the Philosophical Transactions B: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Volume 381 Issue 1951 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society
Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
A very interesting read:
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
Jana Sperschneider @jsperschneider.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
📢 EffectorGeneP is finally here! Stop missing small, single-exon or orphan genes from your favourite pathogen genome. Current tools only annotate 15%-78% of effector genes, EffectorGeneP finds 95% - including the large AvrSr26 family in stem rust. #Bioinformatics 📖 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Marion C. Müller @marioncmueller.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Super excited to see our work on the Pm3e NLR that recognises two structurally diverse AVR effectors from powdery mildew out in @natcomms.nature.com Congratulations to @lukas-kunz.bsky.social, Beat Keller, and everyone involved! Check it out ➡️https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72199-w
nature.com
Dual recognition of structurally unrelated mildew effectors underlies the broad-spectrum resistance of Pm3e in wheat - Nature Communications
The wheat NLR Pm3e provides broad-spectrum resistance against powdery mildew. Here, the authors show that Pm3e recognizes two structurally unrelated effector proteins and that its range can be further...
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Cecile Lorrain @ccilelorrain.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Thrilled to share our paper now out in Nature Plants 🎉 We developed a genome-host association (GHA) approach to study pathogen adaptation directly from field metadata by using the originating host cultivar as phenotype. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Genome–host association mapping reveals wheat pathogen genes involved in host specialization - Nature Plants
This study introduces genome–host association (GHA), leveraging natural epidemics to map the genetic landscape of host adaptation in the pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. Applied to 832 wheat fungal stra...
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Reposted by Lukas Kunz
New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
#TansleyInsight: Entanglement of plant immunity and endomembrane trafficking revealed by plant–powdery mildew fungal interactions Thordal-Christensen et al. 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue #PlantScience @sohini-d.bsky.social
Fig. 2 Model for membrane trafficking in the immune response to powdery mildew fungi.
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Ralph Hückelhoven @huckelhovenr.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Thank you @marioncmueller.bsky.social, @binebrumm.bsky.social, Eric Kemen, Yiheng Hu and Thomas Lahaye for this nice common effort on effector diversity. Diversify and conquer: How effector diversity is shaped by host–microbe co-evolution doi.org/10.1371/jour...
doi.org
Diversify and conquer: How effector diversity is shaped by host–microbe co-evolution
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Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · 14/01/2026
New OA Article: "Virulence on Pm4 kinase-based resistance is determined by two divergent wheat powdery mildew effectors" rdcu.be/eY3ED AvrPm4 effector / wheat Pm4. The pathogen can evade Pm4 recognition by expressing the suppressor SvrPm4, an RNase-like effector.
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Isabel saur @izzysaurlab.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
Wei Shi @wshisky.bsky.social & Merle‘s work is online. Wei really pushed this work from scratch and Merle linked it to MLA diversification…3rd (co-)first author paper in her PhD. Very proud PI! And only possible through collaboration with G. Döhlemann, @grandpahiro.bsky.social &, Matt Platre. (1/x)
doi.org
Targeting of the barley cell-surface receptor SRF3 by the Blumeria hordei effector AVRA13 overlaps with AVRA13 recognition by MLA and the induction of NLR-mediated cell death.
Pathogens secrete effector proteins to promote virulence. Despite their recognition by barley Mla resistance genes, the structurally-related Blumeria hordei ( Bh ) AVRA effectors are maintained in the...
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
When you realize that you're each holding a piece of the same puzzle: Avirulence on the wheat mildew resistance gene Pm4 is controlled by two opposing factors: AvrPm4 and SvrPm4. A collaborative project with @zoebernasconi.bsky.social, Aline Herger, Maria del Pilar Caro and many others. Check it out
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bioRxiv Plant Bio @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Evolution of HMA-integrated tandem kinases accompanied by expansion of target pathogens www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) @slcuplants.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi boost plant resilience by remodelling the plant-pathogen membrane interface Check-out the latest paper from @alexguyon.bsky.social & @dromius.bsky.social 📖 doi.org/10.1016/j.ce... in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social News article www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/news/arbuscu...
Mutualist-pathogen co-colonisation modulates phosphoinositide signatures at host intracellular interfaces: Nicotiana benthamiana plants expressing biosensors for PI4P and PI(4,5)P2. PI(4,5)P2 was tip-enriched at mutualist structures but evenly distributed around pathogen structures. PI4P was absent from pathogen extrahaustorial membranes but present at invasive hyphae and mutualist interfaces. Co-colonisation triggered PI4P recruitment at pathogen haustoria, and enhanced resistance to P. palmivora. Graphic by Alex Guyon.
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Megan McDonald @mcdonaldmeganc.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Our latest pre-print on TE-mediated tandem duplication of the ToxB effector is now online...still a puzzle for us but we think it is in a Helitron! Together with amazing collaborators, Reem Aboukhaddour and Ryan Gourlie #TE #fungi www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
The virulence gene ToxB is both amplified and disrupted by transposons in the wheat pathogen Pyrenophora tritici-repentis
### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, https://ror.org/051dzs374 Alberta Grain Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commissio...
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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
New light on old stones: a fossil #fungus in #symbiosis with one of the oldest known land plants @chistinesd.bsky.social, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @dromius.bsky.social @ffercoq.bsky.social #PlantScience Summary also available in French and Spanish.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
I’m therefore incredibly thankful to all co-authors that contributed to this project. Special thanks to @marioncmueller.bsky.social for contributing many crucial analyses and brilliant ideas, and to Beat Keller for his continuous support of the project over so many years.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
In hindsight, the many setbacks and project-related headaches were compensated by these fascinating insights into the promiscuity of NLR proteins towards effector targets. The project also sparked multiple innovations, large and small, that proved useful for various other research questions.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Personal note: When I joined the (already ongoing) search for ominous AvrPm3e in the Keller lab in 2016, I didn’t know what I signed up for. Approach after approach was unsuccessful until we found an isolate effectively breaking Pm3e resistance in 2022, allowing us to finally map both AVR genes.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
In conclusion, our findings demonstrate the potential of Pm3 immune receptors for broad-spectrum resistance against wheat powdery mildew through recognition of structurally diverse effectors and highlight their amenability for NLR engineering.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Subsequently we used this knowledge to generate engineered Pm3 NLRs that fully incorporate Pm3d- and Pm3e specificities and verified their further extended recognition spectra, now including three mildew AVRs, in Nicotiana and wheat.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Using chimeric NLRs between Pm3d, Pm3e and the ancestral Pm3CS (completely overcome by powdery mildew) we then identified individual amino acid polymorphisms defining the recognition specificity of Pm3d and Pm3e towards their various effector targets.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
We concluded that Pm3d and Pm3e provide broad-spectrum resistance by each recognizing two AVR effectors. While both NLRs converge on a common RNAse-like AVR, they each recognize a unique second AVR factor. In the case of Pm3e that’s a structurally unrelated effector protein.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Intriguingly, AvrPm3e_1 belongs to a group of structurally related effectors with >100 members in wheat powdery mildew (~13% of the entire effector complement) that, so far, has not been implicated as AVR factors neither for Pm3 nor for other resistance sources in wheat or barley.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
We found that Pm3e, like Pm3d, has the ability to recognize variants of the BgtE-20069b effector (now AvrPm3d_1/AvrPm3e_2). However, its second AVR, BgtE-5754 (AvrPm3e_1), encodes a much larger effector protein predicted to exhibit a completely different structure!
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
But what about Pm3e? Here our mapping approach identified two genetically unlinked AVR loci on chromosomes 4 and 9, with the later one perfectly overlapping with the AvrPm3d locus. Identifying the underlying AVRs held an interesting surprise!
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Similar to all other known AVRs in cereal powdery mildews, both AvrPm3d genes encode small effectors with an RNAse-like fold. We concluded that the broad-spectrum resistance of Pm3d is likely due to its ability to recognize two effectors, thereby reducing the likelihood of resistance breakdown.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
However, the locus contained two AVR genes: the previously described BgtE-20069b effector (AvrPm3d_1) as well as its neighboring gene BgtE-20069a (AvrPm3d_2), a close paralog that was missed in our previous study. Only isolates compromised in both AVRs can break the Pm3d resistance.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Using our recently developed avirulence depletion mapping strategy (doi.org/10.1371/jour...), we found that there is a single AvrPm3d locus in wheat powdery mildew.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
Interestingly the Pm3d and Pm3e NLRs differ by only three and two amino acids, respectively, from the ancestral Pm3CS which has been completely overcome by the powdery mildew pathogen. So what makes Pm3d and Pm3e so successful? To answer this we aimed at identifying the corresponding AVR effectors.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
The wheat Pm3 NLR locus is highly diverse with at least 17 alleles providing resistance against wheat powdery mildew. We challenged transgenic Pm3 wheat lines with >90 mildew isolates collected worldwide and identified two Pm3 alleles, Pm3d and Pm3e, that confer broad-spectrum resistance.
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Lukas Kunz @lukas-kunz.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
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...
biorxiv.org
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...
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Helen Brabham @helenbrabs.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Super excited to see our work on the NLRseek program finally published 🥳 Here we identify new NLRs against major wheat pathogens and present a pipeline for NLR identification. Huge thank you to all of the co-authors for bringing this work together! @matthewmoscou.bsky.social rdcu.be/eIGvv
rdcu.be
Discovery of functional NLRs using expression level, high-throughput transformation and large-scale phenotyping
Nature Plants - Rapid discovery of functional resistance genes is enabled by a high-expression signature and high-throughput transformation. This approach identified 31 new resistance genes for...
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Ksenia Krasileva @kseniakrasileva.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
New: ‘Kronos’ #wheat genome preprint • PacBio+Hi-C; 99.9% BUSCO • 2.3k curated NLR loci (1,089 high conf) • 3k EMS datasets re-mapped; 📈 new mutations • Curated smallRNA atlas 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... zenodo.org/records/1021... #genomics #openscience team effort led by Dr Kyungyong Seong 💫
biorxiv.org
The Annotated Blueprint: Integrated Functional Genomic Resources for a Model Tetraploid Wheat Triticum turgidum cv. Kronos
Triticum turgidum cv. Kronos is a tetraploid wheat cultivar that underpins one of the richest community platforms for functional genomics. Over the past decade, about 3,000 exome- and promoter-capture...
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Zoe Bernasconi @zoebernasconi.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Check out our new pre-print! ✨ We cloned AvrWTK4, the first wheat powdery mildew effector recognised by a tandem kinase protein, and show that an HMA-like integrated domain in WTK4 acts as pathogen decoy. Discover the whole story on bioRxiv ⬇️
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Sophien Kamoun @kamounlab.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
First a pentamer, then a hexamer… now an octamer! The riddle of the enigmatic CCG10-NLR immune receptor family cracked open 🔥 Congrats Guanghao @GuanghaoGuo He Zhang @mhz1989 Selva @M__Selvaraj et al. #NLRbiology #plantsci #immunology
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Javier Sánchez-Martín @javicheztin.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
Check out our work on virulence on Pm4 controlled not by one, but two effectors! Avirulence vs. Suppression, a beautiful case of the arms race between wheat and mildew. Work led by @zoebernasconi.bsky.social , Aline Herger, Pilar Caro, and @lukas-kunz.bsky.social 😍🌱🦠! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Virulence on Pm4 kinase-based resistance is determined by two divergent wheat powdery mildew effectors
The wheat resistance gene Pm4 encodes a kinase fusion protein and has gained particular attention as it confers race-specific resistance against two major wheat pathogens: powdery mildew and blast. He...
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bioRxiv Plant Bio @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Molecular investigation of Rlm3 from rapeseed as a broad-spectrum resistance gene against fungal pathogens producing structurally conserved effectors www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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The Tattooed Professor @schwessinger.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Fungal 'sex' is so cool and def gender bending ;). Go check out our @plos.org pathogen perl "Sexual recombination in cereal rust fungi: Knowns and unknowns of pathogen evolution and adaptation" journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
journals.plos.org
Sexual recombination in cereal rust fungi: Knowns and unknowns of pathogen evolution and adaptation
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Ksenia Krasileva @kseniakrasileva.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Latest from the lab 📰 🍄 🦠 - Molecular Insights into Fungal Innate Immunity using genetically tractable model systems, Neurospora crassa and Pseudomonas syringae. When fungi and bacteria meet, they really grow on each other! Led by a PhD student Grace Stark www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Molecular Insights into Fungal Innate Immunity Using the Neurospora crassa - Pseudomonas syringae Model
Recent comparative genomics and mechanistic analyses support the existence of a fungal immune system. Fungi encode genes with features similar to non-self recognition systems in plants, animals, and b...
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Daniel Croll @danielcroll.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
@tbadet.bsky.social and I have a preprint out on transposon silencing in fungi! Genome size evolution is fascinating and showcases the dynamic nature of transposon activation. What we understand less are the dynamics of transposon defense systems encoded by the genomes. doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Fungal phylogeny highlighting genome size changesSummary of genome size variation among groups
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