Targeted DNA insertion remains a major bottleneck in plant engineering. We developed an avian R2 retrotransposon as an efficient plant genome editor to precisely insert large DNA payloads at targeted sites: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Congratulations to @kimuchenje03.bsky.social and the team! 🧵👇

Announcing our new free Webinar series sponsored by GetGenome: Road to Jeju. Check out our Legends and Rising Stars of IS-MPMI speakers. Sign up to attend the first talk by Roger Innes on June 17. lnkd.in/gw4pKp4K Check back for how to apply to give a Rising Stars of IS-MPMI talk.

This is wild: HMA domain proteins binding a MAX effector to activate NLR-mediated immunity through cNMP signaling molecules. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Optimized glycosylation patterns to recapitulate arabidopsis FLS2-flagellin binding in yeast surface display 👏 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Save the american chestnut 🌰

Plant synthetic biology faculty opening – come be my colleague! 🌱🧬 @universityofga.bsky.social Department of Plant Biology is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Plant Synthetic Biology for Strategic Resources Research. Join UGA's growing plant synbio community!

Reading this 👀 new tool for in vivo plant protein selection www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Really excited to join Stanford ChemE this September! We'll engineer proteins in plant immune and hormone pathways, combining high-throughput directed evolution with ML. Our goal is to enhance climate stress resilience and disease resistance in crops: rim.stanford.edu

Found last season's EquiSciTrack series helpful for the job search!

Studying wild resistant varieties -> basic biology -> a solution to a devastating disease in citrus. Pretty amazing

🌱From Nature Genetics: RWT4, a wheat tandem kinase protein, directly binds and phosphorylates a fungal effector to trigger defense - highlighting TKPs as effector sensors. (Yi-Chang Sung, Suji Baik, Gitta Coaker) ▶️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Toddler and i enjoy the same book somehow

I've also been thinking about this: "Why Are There So Few Commercially Successful Crop Varieties Engineered for Disease Resistance?" bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

If you are a #WNT lover (who is not?) you cannot miss the incoming Grodon Research Conference www.grc.org/wnt-signalin... and the preceeding GRSeminar www.grc.org/wnt-signalin... a unique forum for younger scientists to present their work 👉 Please help me spread the word and RT (or RB?)!🙏

Former USDA employee (and a UC Davis colleague) terminated days before her due date: "We wouldn't have food without our farmers. A lot of us working for the USDA, that's what we do, we support American farmers" abcnews.go.com/Politics/vid...

We're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year and remembering some great moments from the past decade! In February 2022, IGI's Pam Ronald won the Wolf Prize in Agriculture for her “pioneering work on disease resistance and environmental stress tolerance in rice.” Read more: ow.ly/kAqe50UPW9s

A tour de force starting with C. elegans juice that identified a nematode peptide MAMP-plant immune receptor pair

I'm very excited to share my first graduate research project! Check out our preprint which describes how data generated with directed evolution can be used to model the phenotypic effects of naturally-evolved sequence variants. (1/11) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is wild. A fungal pathogen-secreted molecule can transdifferentiate bundle sheath into xylem, increasing water content of plant host under drought stress. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Review of CRISPR-edited crops - personal favorite is non-browning avocados!

In her second paper Flor and team (collaboration with Lingdong Shi and Jill Banfield) showed that reduced methane emissions in transgenic rice genotypes are associated with altered rhizosphere microbial hydrogen cycling. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Flor and team also have two new papers! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Kudos to Ellen Rim and team on their fantastic new paper describing a HTP approach for generating new immune specificities. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...