Arabidopsis coordinates Fe acquisition with its root microbiota by releasing distinct coumarin chemotypes in response to environmental pH. These root-exuded specialized metabolites interact with root-...

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

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...

Recent discoveries on bacterial immunity have revealed that several protein domains involved in anti-phage defense are conserved in eukaryotes, such as SIRim, TIR, PNP and gasdermin. Bacterial immune ...

Inflammation induces interchromosomal DNA interactions that bring parent genes into close proximity, facilitating the formation of chimeric mRNAs that encode physiologically relevant, functional prote...

Nature Reviews Immunology - Adaptive immunity is indispensable to vertebrates, yet most living organisms defend themselves perfectly well without it. Here, I ask why somatically diversified antigen...

Highlighted Article: Comparative and mathematical analyses reveal that oil body cell patterning in fossil and extant liverworts is consistent with a local activation-lateral inhibition mechanism, poin...

EMBL Hamburg / CSSB The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s flagship life sciences organization, with more than 110 independent research groups across Heidelberg, Hamburg, Grenobl...

Phages often degrade the genome of their bacterial host to individual nucleotides. Here we describe Metis, a bacterial defense system that directly senses phage-mediated host genome degradation. Metis...

The mechanisms underlying the adaptation of lichens to nutrient-poor environments are poorly understood. Here, Happacher et al. show that a globally distributed lichen fungus produces an iron-scavengi...

Preprints now disseminate a large share of biomedical research before peer review. Because they have not yet passed peer review, some scientists regard preprint claims as unverified or potentially unr...

Plants activate pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) and effector-triggered immunity (ETI) to combat pathogens. However, how these systems coordinate immune activation while preventing autoimmunity remain...

A generative model using AlphaFold3 as prior infers protein conformational ensembles consistent with measured experimental data.

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 23 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02395-3Predicting infection heterogeneity requires looking beyond the host. Phage–bacteria coevolution in tomato fields maintains diverse bacterial strategies and explains uneven disease occurrence across plant populations.

The type II secretion (T2S) system is conserved across the Xanthomonas lineage, yet its contributions to pathogenicity and secreted protein repertoires are poorly defined. We demonstrate that T2S syst...

Small molecules produced by TIR (Toll-interleukin-1 receptor) domains are essential for plant immune signaling. A central TIR-derived signal is 2'cADPR, a cyclic ADP-ribose (ADPR) molecule that is gen...

Toll/interleukin-1/resistance (TIR) domain NADase enzymes signal in plant immunity by producing ribosylated nucleotide second messengers which activate EDS1 dimer-helper NLR pathways to restrict patho...

A functional screen reveals phage sponge proteins that bind Pycsar, Thoeris and CBASS signalling molecules to inhibit bacterial immunity.

Many bacterial defense systems restrict phage infection by breaking down the molecule nicotinamide (Nam) adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) into adenosine di…

A better understanding of battles between bacteria and viruses could inspire new medicines

A pooled, cell-based, genetic screening platform in plants is used for the functional analysis of cytokinin signaling proteins.