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...

Insects have evolved diverse strategies to protect their genome-reduced symbionts during vertical transmission. Here, authors show that tortoise beetles have co-opted a Yellow protein to form spheres ...

Natural products are central to the ecology and evolution of many insect-microbe symbioses, where they underpin parasitism, host manipulation, and cooperative interactions. In this review, we examine…

Nature Plants - This study reports a bivalent factor, ULTRAPETALA1, that can counteract as well as promote PRC2 activity at hundreds of developmental genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. The pro-PRC2...

This study reports a bivalent factor, ULTRAPETALA1, that can counteract as well as promote PRC2 activity at hundreds of developmental genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. The pro-PRC2 activity of ULTRAPETAL...

Some insects and microbes develop symbiotic partnerships, which become so interdependent that they can no longer survive without each other. But how specific are these heritable symbioses? That was th...

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...

Herbivorous insects can shape the epidemiology of disease in plants by vectoring numerous phytopathogens. While the consequences of infection are often well-characterized in the host plant, the extent...

In a recent publication in Science, Nishino et al. reveal the evolutionary co-option of an auditory structure into a newly identified type of symbiotic organ. This organ, found on the hindlegs of fema...

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the newly appointed group of Dr Hassan Salem at the John Innes Centre, working on cutting-edge science in the field of Crop…

Dinidorid stinkbugs were reported to possess a conspicuous tympanal organ on female hindlegs. In this study, we show that this organ is specialized to retain microbial symbionts rather than to perceiv...

High-throughput molecular studies of museum specimens (museomics) have great potential in biodiversity research, but fungal historical collections have scarcely been examined, leading to no comprehe...