It's back live! Check out my week at TSL 🌱

Excited to preprint this collaborative study led by @adamrbentham.bsky.social in which computationally-designed protein binders were generated that recognise pathogen effectors leading to a plant immune response when deployed within NLR immune receptors. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to see our new preprint on bioRxiv! 🌱🤖 We used AI protein design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN) to build brand-new sensor domains from scratch and installed them in a rice NLR immune receptor engineering recognition of a Fusarium effector FoSSP17

Awesome to see this bioRxiv out, after lots of great work from @yuxuan-xi.bsky.social to integrate de novo binders into a plant immune receptor! It's a very exciting time to be working on protein engineering in this field 🧬🌱

Our new preprint is out! Using AI-guided design (RFdiffusion + ProteinMPNN), we engineered a plant immune receptor to recognise non-cognate pathogen effectors. Huge thanks to our amazing co-authors for making this possible! doi.org/10.64898/202...

Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.10.737686v1

We are excited to announce that @berasymbionts.bsky.social's group is fully operational at TSL, with their beetles now happy in the insectary! Aileen's research program focuses on the three-way molecular dialogue between fungi, insects and plants 🍄‍🟫🪲🌱 Full video here: buff.ly/PEk4PAJ

PhD project on Blast Fungus host pentration open in my #Proteomics group at @thesainsburylab.bsky.social for an October 2026 entry. Collaborative project with @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social. Deadline: 30th July. Open to Home Fee status applicants. biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/inv...

‼️Job altert🚨📢 please spread the word: We're looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our new department "Phytopathology and Plant Protection" at @unihalle.bsky.social. www.verwaltung.uni-halle.de/DEZERN3/AUSS...

New Publication: Engineering an Exo70 integrated domain of a barley NLR for improved blast resistance (2026) www.tsl.ac.uk/publications...

TIRs are key regulators of plant immunity, but the role of conserved TIR-only proteins has remained unclear. Here, we compare TIR-only proteins from Arabidopsis and barley and show that they share a conserved role in plant immunity. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Conserved TIR-only proteins drive transcriptional defense and basal immunity in dicot and monocot plants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.07.730676v1

📄 Delighted to share that the preprint of my main PhD work is out now! 👏 A huge thank you to everyone involved, @tommclean.bsky.social, Govind Chandra, Ngat Tran (both not on BlueSky) and especially my PhD supervisor @tunglejic.bsky.social 👏 🧵 below! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

When caterpillars attack, the common bean plant relies on a receptor in its leaves to sound a chemical rallying cry that recruits predatory wasps, a new #ScienceAdvances study finds. https://scim.ag/434rXN5

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/...

Effector recognition by molecular mimicry of its target by an NLR - enabling multiple disease resistance specificities to be generated- first seen on @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social - great work led by @dianagdlc.bsky.social and Matt Moscou www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Strengthening Predictive Models for Wheat Stem Rust Infection Risk in a Changing Climate: Gaps and Opportunities - Morier‐Gxoyiya - 2026 - Plant Pathology - Wiley Online Library bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

One question that stuck with me early in my PhD was whether the experimental data underpinning wheat stem rust epidemiological models were still fit for purpose. Our new review digs into the evidence, how it’s used in models, and where the biggest gaps remain.

📢 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!

Yesterday my first PhD student @himanshuchhillar.bsky.social @unileiden.bsky.social successfully defended his thesis with excellent performance Wish you all the best, Dr Chhillar! 🇮🇳 #proudPI #ECR

The demonstration of a single origin for nodule evolution, with nodule engineering in a non-nodulating species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.31.728964v1

Excited to share this paper from @yiechanglin.bsky.social showing how lipids can move between bacterial membranes along the bridge like protein TamB. Also happy to be able to post the cool movie. 🎥🌟 #MDsimulations #StructuralBiology doi.org/10.1016/j.bp...

Excited to share that I will start my lab this summer as an ECL Unit Leader at RIKEN CSRS! We will study perception by cell-surface receptors across diverse plant species. I’ll be recruiting soon, so please reach out if you’re interested!

@talbotlabtsl.bsky.social and I reviewed what we know about our favourite cereal killer and compared it to human-infecting relatives. Check it out! 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Extracellular vesicles associate with infectious geminiviral particles in the apoplast of infected plants. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.22.727136v1

Preprint Alert 🚨 @philcarella.bsky.social lab stepping into TIR-ritory!! Project started by me but finished by talented PhD student @ebkennedy.bsky.social (Please follow her), with contribution from Zhao He and @jonathandgjones.bsky.social We investigated EDS1-dependency of TIR domain. See thread👇

@khongsamchia.bsky.social Extremely excited to share the first pre-print from my PhD project in the Carella lab, co-first authored with @khongsamchia.bsky.social 🎉 (Thread below ⬇️) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Huge thanks to all co-authors and the #CarellaCapybaras for all the support 😊

Canonical NLR immune receptor architecture enforces EDS1-dependency onto divergent TIR domains https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.20.726525v1

We’re looking for a postdoc to identify polarity determining factors in bundle sheath cells of C4 grasses and their role in the carbon concentrating mechanism. @johninnescentre.bsky.social Applications close 15th June. Please check out the job ad below or get in touch! #PlantSciJobs

Check out our latest work! AlphaFold 3 revealed a transient immune receptor complex that eluded biochemical studies for almost a decade 🤯 We describe a conserved structural logic underlying sensor–helper communication in an NLR immune receptor network 🧵👇

Emma Turley started her PhD expecting the effector ChEC108 would aid Colletotrichum establish infection, but she instead discovered that when it makes it's way to plasmodesmata it's bound by host HIPP6, triggering PD closure and impeding infection. #PlantScience

A conserved structural logic underlies sensor-helper NLR communication in the NRC immune receptor network https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.18.725810v1

Colletotrichum higginsianum effector ChEC108 binds a plasmodesmal HMA protein and elicits plant defence https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.19.726166v1

@joshwbennett.bsky.social, one of our students based at the @johninnescentre.bsky.social completed his #PIPS at start-up @resurrectbio.bsky.social. Read about his experience 🔽 biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/student-stor... #PhD #amazingplacements

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

📢 The next @mpmijournal.bsky.social Focus Issue is now open for submissions: "Plant Immune Receptors in the Spotlight" 🌱🔬 Edited by @dinglab.bsky.social @clemmar.bsky.social @marischuster.bsky.social Rich Wilson and myself! Submit your best work by 31/10/26! 👇 apsjournals.apsnet.org/mpmireceptors

Protein structure prediction changed biology. Protein assembly discovery is next. We present SNI (Structural Novelty Index), a scalable framework for finding new protein complexes. We used it to uncover an unexpected resistosome assembly: 11-mer. 🧵👇🏻 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

AI-guided discovery of atypical protein assemblies https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.03.722499v1

Bacterial immune proteins have repeatedly evolved to become parts of eukaryotic immunity. But how? Our new preprint uncovers a recent horizontal transfer event & shows how eukaryotes co-opted a toxic bacterial immune protein 🦠🧪🧵 1/

New textbook entry for NLR biology 📖 Congratulations everyone 🎉

End of April and I got my diploma🥂 Now the PhD degree is official! I hope I've mentioned everyone in my acknowledgments, but I still can’t thank you enough for all the support along this journey: ) If anyone's looking for some 400-page light reading… here it is ➡️ ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

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/...

Final version of our NRG1 MS is out! We uncover a surprising mechanism: the helper NLR NRG1 targets organellar membranes to trigger immunity Great collaborations with @KamounLab, @JiorgosKourelis, @jonathandgjones, @AdamWu9527, and the @Phil_Carella labs! science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

So happy to see this work out 🧬✨ Massive congratulations to @emmajbanks.bsky.social and @tunglejic.bsky.social, who led this beautiful study, and to all collaborators involved. I’m very grateful to have contributed the part of the story.

Excited to share our discovery of a new programmable RNA-guided DNA-targeting system hiding inside bacteriophages that predates CRISPR. We call it VIPR (Viral Interference Programmable Repeat), and it uses an entirely new logic to find its targets. Thread + link below.

Excited to share our paper on the NLRP3 inflammasome condensate at the Microtubule Organizing Center (MTOC) by "precise!" cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), in collaboration with Jue (phyllis) Wang in the labs of Grant Jensen (BYU) and Pete Dahlberg (Stanford)! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

ICYMI 📻 Catch up on yesterday’s BBC Radio 4 World at One programme - Sarah Montague caught up with JIC's Dr Elizabeth Orton to hear about the process she has refined to speed up ash seed germination, from years in nature down to a week in the lab (from 39:20): www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Proud to share this preprint from Freddie_King and Juan Carlos @AdamWu9527 & @lderevnina labs! AS109-mediated agroinfiltration enables transient expression across non-model plants and positions faba bean as a tractable system for studying disease-resistance

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...

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.