Background During host colonization, fungal plant pathogens secrete effector-like proteins that alter host cell physiology and target plant-associated microbes. However, rapid evolution and low sequen...

The grass family (Poaceae) has immense economic and ecological importance and exhibits distinctive metabolic traits, including dual starch and lignin biosynthetic pathways. We sequenced the genomes of...

Abstract. Fungi harbor diverse arrays of genes encoding NOD-like receptors (NLRs), key intracellular immune proteins found in plants, animals, and bacteria

The limited diversity and recognition scope of natural plant immune receptors impede resistance breeding against rapidly evolving pathogens. Here we report programmable design of synthetic plant immun...

Extracellular interactions are pivotal in the plant–pathogen arms race. Fungal, bacterial, and oomycete pathogens manipulate the apoplast to control pH, water soaking, sugar levels, and nutrient avail...

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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Plants are exposed to a variety of devastating pathogens, causing significant yearly yield losses. In order to facilitate infections, plant pathogens …

Abstract. Identifying recurrent changes in biological sequences is important to multiple aspects of biological research—from understanding the molecular ba

Deuterolysin metalloproteases (M35s), a family of zinc-dependent proteolytic enzymes, function as key virulence factors in bacteria and fungi. In plant-pathogenic fungi, these proteins induce host cel...

Nature Methods - Scikit-bio: a fundamental Python library for biological omic data analysis

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly permeating scientific research, yet their capabilities in plant molecular biology remain largely uncharacterized. Here, we present MoBiPlant, the first compreh...

Leucine-rich repeat (LRR) receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLKs) are important plant immunity proteins. The wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici produces many virulence effectors during infection; however, m...

The systematic discovery of functional RNA structure directly from sequence remains a central challenge in genomics. Plastid genomes, with their deep evolutionary history and extensive data availabili...

Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

Eukaryotes detect biomolecules through surface-localized receptors, key signaling components. A subset of receptors survey for pathogens, induce immunity, and restrict pathogen growth. Comparative gen...

Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 30 June 2025; doi:10.1038/s41579-025-01195-6In this Review, Mondo and Grigoriev explore the central role of omics approaches to investigate the biology and evolution of fungi and understand phylogeny and how traits evolved over time within the fungal kingdom.

Brazil, the largest Latin American country, is underrepresented in genomic research despite boasting the world’s largest recently admixed population. In this study, we generated 2723 high-coverage who...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 28 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00828-zAdvances in long-read sequencing are driving the implementation of these technologies for transcriptome profiling. The authors provide a comprehensive guide to long-read RNA sequencing, including experimental and computational tools, current applications, challenges and opportunities.

Characterization of the genetic architecture underlying the 7 pairs of contrasting traits studied by Mendel and the over 70 additional agronomic traits in pea (Pisum sativum) reveals their m...

Controlling for phylogeny is essential in comparative genomics studies, because species, genomes and genes are not independent data points within statistical tests. The authors review the application ...