It's be an honour to write this TALE-review with my long-time friend and colleague Jan Grau 👨‍🔬📗🧑‍💻. It's about both worlds: virulence, genomics 🌾🧫🧪 & genome editing, SynBio 🧬✂️. All figures done by ourselves! Hope you like it. Please spread the news! 📰🥳 doi.org/10.1146/annu...

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.

FERONIA orchestrates plasma membrane nanoclusters for plant thermotolerance | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@nature, researchers describe an RNA-RNA-mediated arm-race between fungal pathogens and their plant hosts. Specifically, they show that a fungal lncRNA weakens host immunity by sequestering a protective rice miRNA. shorturl.at/mIuvy

This must be one of the most delicious figures we have ever published. In this primer Guoan Zhou, Zhixi Tian and colleagues introduce the domestication history and biology odyssey soybean and its many uses. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Curiosity is the only addiction I would recommend @TEDx #TEDxPashaStreet

Just as low-oxygen levels stress plants that are exposed to flooding, so does post-flooding reoxygenation and the associated burst of reactive oxygen species. Work @nature, shows that in both cases, the same molecular players mediate plants’ stress response. shorturl.at/kIRDf

Glad to contribute to this interesting and very important topic with Prof. Dongping Lu. The ubiquitin code of receptor kinases in plants - Zhou - Journal of Integrative Plant Biology - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Out Now! Phytophthora targets plant extracellular vesicles to promote infection #MicroSky

Out Now! MoCox6 is a regulator of mitophagy and a druggable target in Magnaporthe oryzae #MicroSky

Happy to contribute to this interesting work. Rhizobacteria opportunistically boost colonization and impair plant fitness by degrading plant-derived coumarins under iron deficiency www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

@albertopmacho.bsky.social and I summarize advances in understanding how T3Es modulate cellular processes beyond immune signaling for colonization in COPB. Sabotage behind enemy lines: Bacterial hijacking of plant cellular functions www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Work @nature shows how an NLR--transcription factor module mediates rice resistance to bacterial blight. Rice subspecies differing in this module vary in pathogen resistance. The authors overcome lower resistance by manipulating the two layers of plant immunity. share.google/yeQzT8TgUzaM...

✂️This comprehensive validation of CasY7 across 942 #transgenic #plants confirmed robust editing in #maize, #rice, and #wheat, establishing CasY7 as a high-efficiency addition to the #CRISPR toolkit. 🧬 doi.org/10.1111/jipb... @wileylifesci.bsky.social #PlantSci #CropSci

Cell-surface receptors play key roles across many biological processes. In plants, these receptor families have undergone remarkable expansion. Here, we systematically review these receptors in @theplantjournal.bsky.social Happy to see this out! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... Very neat agricultural microbiome research. There was legacy effect of potato plant vigor based on what production field it was grown in.

Want to image apoplastic pH in plants? 🔬 Two new papers from our team offer a full workflow plus open access analysis tools. Congrats to @aroessling.bsky.social, Niklas Mayle and @lguerard.bsky.social Nature Protocols: rdcu.be/e7R2E BMC Methods: lnkd.in/dctpWJ3X Happy Imaging!

To activate plant immunity, NLR receptors such as SUMM2 form resistosome complexes, which act as Ca2+-permeable plasma-membrane channels. Work @nature shows how SUMM2 and its associates assemble into even higher-order clusters to initiate cell death. shorturl.at/653TZ plus N&V shorturl.at/vqqYg

@Nature: an E3 ligase, acting via the jasmonate pathway, is a common regulator of both cold stress & phosphate uptake. Guided by AI, the authors use genome editing to show the relevance of this finding for improving maize yield in multi-site field trials. shorturl.at/KrKBo & NV shorturl.at/rwldu

RNA splicing generates a functionally specialized Rep protein isoform in geminiviruses — enabling timely control of the viral cycle. Strikingly, similar strategies might have evolved in DNA viruses infecting different kingdoms: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Spearheaded by @delphinem-p.bsky.social!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Excited to share that PNAS published our research article focused on "Why are Ralstonia goofy?"

Our collaborated research identified a two-layer epigenetic mechanism to silence Avr genes in Phytophthora sojae and enable host adaptation in soybean. Please check url: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Incredibly happy and proud of our Chaonan Shi (chaonan123.bsky.social ), who successfully defended her doctoral thesis yesterday at the @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social ! (And what a brilliant defence it was!) 🥳🥳🥳 Congratulations, Dr Shi!!! 🍾🥂🍋‍🟩🌶️ We are so lucky to have you in our team ❤️

How do plants fight disease? 🌱 #NASmember Jane Parker studies NLR proteins that help plants sense attackers and launch powerful immune defenses. She shares her latest findings on how these proteins signal plants to resist disease in a new @pnas.org QnAs: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

FRET sensor for SA developed. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Chromosome architecture affects virulence and competitiveness in Agrobacterium tumefaciens C58 | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A long road to the Cover of Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A quantitative microbiome atlas reveals hidden diversity, eukaryotic keystones, and evolutionary trade-offs in plant rhizospheres. www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...

Fungal resistance in rice is restored by interfamily transfer of an evolutionarily lost co-receptor: Cell Host & Microbe www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Very happy to share our latest work “Systematic discovery and engineering of synthetic immune receptors in plants” out in @science.org ! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our latest paper is now online at New Phytologist!   Phosphorylation-dependent association of a bacterial effector with plant 14-3-3 proteins enhances effector stability and bacterial virulence   doi.org/10.1111/nph.... @newphyt.bsky.social

Very proud of this collaboration with Jose and Alberto, the co-corresponding authors; and of course, many congratulations to the Team. #MicroSky #PlantScience

Identification and functional dissection of maize disease resistance genes onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Inactivation of β-1,3-glucan synthase-like 5 confers broad-spectrum resistance to Plasmodiophora brassicae pathotypes in cruciferous plants www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.nature.com/articles/415... Re-reading an oldie but goodie. #Ralstonia was one of the first bacterial genomes to be sequenced. This paper is a great introduction to Ralstonia and their genomes. I am not sure I looked at the supplemental material before, but I like it.

The transcriptome landscape induced by Pseudomonas syringae core effectors reveals new insights into the immune network in Nicotiana benthamiana - Ma - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Our first wheat stripe rust Avr effector story. It is a short one that points to suppressors in this pathosystem while we could not link this Avr effector to a described R gene. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Ancient hybridization underlies tuberization and radiation of the potato lineage www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

“Tomato is the mother of potato.” scim.ag/4mheKrH

🌱 From Nature Plants: By modifying key surface residues, researchers expanded FLS2 receptor recognition of polymorphic flagellin. AlphaFold guided the engineering. (Tianrun Li, Esteban Jarquin Bolaños, Danielle M. Stevens, Hanxu Sha, Gitta Coaker) ▶️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PlantBiology

Excited this paper is finally published! We focused on the inner concave surface of LRR RKs to expand bacterial flagellin perception in plants. Selection indicates expanded perception is more common than previously thought. Experiments led by @jerrytli.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new work lead by Anuphon. Cryo Structure of CARD1 reveals copper in the ecodomain, required for sensing H202. The phenotype of card1 is same as rbohd, suggesting ROS produced by RBOHD is sensed by CARD1.

Parker Group alumni, from the early 2000s to 2025, the best folks! Grateful for everyone who helped shape the science over the years #2025ISMPMI Thanks @federicalocci.bsky.social for taking the picture

#2025ISMPMI has been great, so many connections made and re-established. I found this on the railway bridge.

Cajal bodies are membraneless structures with fundamental roles across eukaryotes—but which proteins actually make them up? Using FAPS, Zhou et al. isolated 34 million plant Cajal bodies and profiled their proteome via LC-MS/MS. Curious? Check out our latest preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited and happy to meet @gittacoaker.bsky.social after quite a few years #2025ISMPMI. Nice discussions about science, as always.

In Cologne, breakfast with beautiful view. Excited to attend 2025 IS-MPMI. Learn and discuss new science about MPMI, meet old and new friends.