We’re happy to introduce phageFACTor (Functional Annotation and Curation Tool) 👩‍💻Developed by Tanaïs Moreau, our most recent PhD candidate, and building on Phold, we were able to improve annotation of prophage genes by as much as 50% 🧬 You should check it out github.com/TMs-code/pha...

📢 PDRA Position - Plant Immune Receptor Bioengineering at Imperial College London 🌱 Start: Aug 2026 (flexible) 🧪 Wet lab + bioinformatics 📅 Up to 3 years (ERC-funded) 📍 South Kensington, on site ℹ️ shorturl.at/VIITk 🔗 kourelislab.com #PlantImmunity #PlantPathology 🙏 Share with interested candidates!

Our paper on the YprA family of helicases and their roles in bacterial defence is now out! We describe ARMADA, a defence system synergise with Druantia and show that both systems spread horizontally on a novel type of mobile genetic element that we call SPIDERs www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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/...

Very exciting news, congratulations! :)

🌿🧬Bryophytes have a larger gene family space than vascular plants. New super pangenome analysis of 123 genomes reveals new immune receptors & microbial genes acquired through horizontal transfer Small in size. Big in genetic toolkit #plantscience @natgenet.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A new preprint is OUT! 🚨 Thrilled to finally share our work on how decoy diversification underpins the regulation of an NLR-mediated autoimmunity. Check out the full story on @bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... (1/6)

We are excited to release the BAT!🦇🚨 We've used this phylogenetic analysis pipeline in our lab for years, and grad Ben Sheppard now presents a Github release and preprint. I run BAT analyses almost daily. It makes exploring gene families routine, customizable, and fun🧵

See a brief review summarizing the use of synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) for revealing the ecology of specialized metabolites [my holiday break writing exercise] portlandpress.com/essaysbioche... #MicrobiomeEcology at Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL)

IQ-TREE 3: Phylogenomic Inference Software using Complex Evolutionary Models academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

📢 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...

Very excited to see our recent work on NRG1 organellar targeting now published! It has been a pleasure working with Tarhan on this, combining synthetic biology/genetics with some incredible microscopy 🤝 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Big opportunities for researchers 🌍 We are investing nearly €400 million to help researchers share their work and collaborate with the best scientific teams across the EU. The 2026 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships are now open. More: link.europa.eu/PNxpxw

Excited to share our preprint using Rhizobium rhizogenes AS109 for agroinfiltration, facilitating strong transient expression across non-model plants including sweet potato, mustard, Medicago and faba bean! doi.org/10.64898/202... 1/7

Finally out! A follow-up to our Rhizobium rhizogenes story with @tolgaboz.bsky.social and Lida. We hope this work will make it easier to study many other plant species. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We are hiring! We’re excited to recruit a postdoc to our lab at UC Davis to work on plant immune engineering and single-cell analyses of plant pathogen interactions. Apply by June 1. Please repost. www.coakerlab.org/postdoctoral...

Congratulations Mauricio! You and your work truly deserve it :)

As an emerging leader in plant innate immunity, we're thrilled to present Mauricio Contreras with a 2027 Early Career Research Award! Alongside advocating for Open Science and preprint review, Mauricio's "activation-and-release" and "NLR resurrection" models are already referenced worldwide.

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...

"Research is often described as ‘basic’, but there is nothing basic about it. The links between discovery-based research and downstream applications aren’t always clear at the outset. Although a translational output may require years to achieve" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reconstructing plant beneficial bacterial consortia by integrating dilution-to-extinction microbiome perturbation with genome-resolved synthetic ecology https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.09.717421v1

Dear Conference Organizers, Please for the love of all things, provide an easily printable agenda. These weird web interfaces to build your own and apps are just not it. I'm sure you could find better ways to spend our conference fees. Maybe on more coffee? #AcademicSky

There is a lot of undescribed prokaryotic diversity in existing whole-genome metagenomic data! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super happy to share our new review about how bacteria adapt to plant environment over the years. It was a collaborative effort between the network #redplantmicro of researchers interested in molecular biology and plant microbe interactions.

Never outdated: 12 timeless tips for effective leadership. blog.venturemagazine.net/12-tips-for-...

Microbial Cohorts: Bringing Ecological Meaning to the Modularity Concept of Co-Occurrence Networks #ISMECommun by Felix Milke, @sarilog.bsky.social, Meinhard Simon, Armando Pacheco-Valenciana & Sinikka T Lennartz academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

#OpenCloning is a an Open Source alternative to SnapGene/Benchling that supports automation and integration with other software ✅ Free 🔓 Open Source 🧬 More cloning methods than SnapGene 🤖 Can be automated with python 👨‍🔬 Built by a researcher — for researchers! 👉 Check it out at opencloning.org

Kamounia striata -- a 300 million year-old oomycete fossil! Thank you Christine Strullu-Derrien ☺️ doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Interesting

This is first paper from a new line of research in my lab, with more to come soon. If interested in PDPs I highly recommend this @baym.lol paper www.nature.com/articles/s41... and this classic from Matti Jalasvuori royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A first dive in fern x pathogen interaction! More to come! Congratulations @baptistebio.bsky.social @jacquet-chris.bsky.social et al.!

Thrilled to share that our TEtrimmer paper has just been published in Nature Communications! A big thank you to all collaborators — the article is now online ;) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very important paper and resource. Bryophyte genomes expanded by one order of magnitude. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For those recalling the awesome session on ecology and evolution of zoonoses at GRC MPB 2023, or those who wish they were there, these authors and topic were on Rosie's and my wish list. Ancient pathogen genomes have much to say. www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

This looks like an amazing tool www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A root-specific NLR network mediates immune signaling of resistance genes against plant parasitic nematodes (Daniel Lüdke , Toshiyuki Sakai , Jiorgos Kourelis , et al) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience

I’m very grateful and excited to start our ARIA-funded project on redesigning plant immunity!

Conserved Phytophthora effector protease cleaves BAK1 to suppress defense. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It fills me with pride listening to Yi-Feng Chen talking about his research at #2025ISMPMI. I am happy to see the fruits of his effort. Congratulations!

Plz RT. We are looking for a postdoc to join our collborative project on AI-guided bioengineering of plant immune receptors @tolgaboz.bsky.social and @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social labs: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNV032/r...

Very happy to finally present my poster to a very interested audience! It’s always a pleasure to discuss about agro, commonly seen as a tool, but still a (cool) plant pathogen. Still at #2025ISMPMI, so if you are interested in my work, don’t be shy to say hi!

It was an amazing sciences day at #2025ISMPMI! Right after the “Population, biology, ecology and genomics” session, I had the opportunity to have lunch and discuss about this topic with the co-chair @honour.bsky.social

String manipulation is a critical daily task for bioinformaticians. Here is a cheatsheet using stringr: rstudio.github.io/cheatsheets... I probably use stringr::str_replace() once every other day... to clean up metadata (of course!) #rstats

Just arrived to #2025ISMPMI! I am very excited to learn a lot about plant-pathogen interactions from all of you! If you want to learn more about A4 and our current progress, feel free to visit me at P-211 on Wednesday!

Thrilled to share our latest preprint! This work started during my PhD and was finished together with @jmadhuprakash.bsky.social. We found a Phytophthora infestans L-shaped effector that bridges a host TOL protein to activated NLRs to suppress immunity! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/15

Cell-type-specific execution of effector-triggered immunity Our new preprint is online, 1 July⬇️ With @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social @leonardojo.bsky.social Amey Redkar @kaisakajala.bsky.social @jonathandgjones.bsky.social For early readers & community feedback🙏🏼 #openscience @erc.europa.eu

So, has this reached us yet? Yes, it did. I did a quick #rstats analysis of the literature in ecology. 📊 🔗 See my new blog post: www.pieceofk.fr/the-rise-of-...

This is textbook cell biology material by chin-hang Wu and colleagues . Check it out 👇 #plantsci #plantpath #immunology #NLRbiology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Massive #NLRbiology paper drop by Yi-Feng @YiFeng_eYFP Chih-Hang @AdamWu9527 and colleagues 👏 "Single-cell-resolved calcium and organelle dynamics in resistosome-mediated cell death." doi.org/10.1101/2025...

📜 Exploring the formation and permeability of plasmodesmata in the liverwort, Marchantia polymorpha 🧑‍🔬 Chia-Yun Hsu, Chia-Hsuan Hsu, Hui-Yu Chang, Kuan-Ju Lu 📔 @plantcellphysiol.bsky.social 🔗 academic.oup.com/pcp/article/... #️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantEvoDevo #Marchantia #Plasmodesmata