Plant Molecular Biology Consortium

"From natural diversity to rational modification of plant immune receptors"

Plants have a powerful immune system that relies on population level diversity of innate immune receptors. We have analyzed within species diversity of receptors in Arabidopsis, soybean and maize and uncovered that a subset of genes evolves rapidly though mutations at the ligand binding sites. We also show that such rapidly evolving subsets of receptors are marked by distinct genomic and epigenomic features. With advances in computational structural biology we can model receptors as well as their ligands and move towards rational modification of receptor specificities. We are developing transcription circuit approaches to better control synthetic alleles. Together, a combination of inter-species diversity analysis and synthetic biology provide new approaches towards rational disease control.

Dr. Ksenia Krasileva is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an interdisciplinary scientist who studies genomics and innate immune systems. Krasileva holds both BS and PhD degrees from Berkeley where she studied plant-microbe interactions and was trained in Genomic and Computational Biology. She did her post graduate work in wheat genomics at University of California Davis supported by USDA NIFA Postdoctoral Fellowship. Krasileva received the Carlotta award honoring women in working on wheat, Gordon and Betty Moore New Innovator award for her ideas in engineering immune receptors and NIH New Innovator award to pursue understanding innate immunity across kingdoms. Krasileva Lab at Berkeley maintains research interests in the biology of genomes, evolution and function of plant innate immunity.

"NLR Receptors in Plant Immunity: Making Sense of the Alphabet Soup"

Plants coordinately use cell-surface and intracellular immune receptors to perceive pathogens and mount an immune response. Intracellular events of pathogen recognition are largely mediated by immune receptors of the nucleotide binding and leucine rich-repeat (NLR) classes. Upon pathogen perception, NLRs trigger a potent broad-spectrum immune reaction, usually accompanied by a form of programmed cell death termed the hypersensitive response. Some plant NLRs act as multifunctional singleton receptors which combine pathogen detection and immune signaling. However, NLRs can also function in higher order pairs and networks of functionally specialized interconnected receptors. I will cover the basic aspects of plant NLR biology with an emphasis on NLR networks. I will highlight some of the recent advances in NLR structure, function, and activation and discuss emerging topics such as modulator NLRs, pathogen suppression of NLRs, and NLR bioengineering. Multi-disciplinary approaches are required to disentangle how these NLR immune receptor pairs and networks function and evolve. Answering these questions holds the potential to deepen our understanding of the plant immune system and unlock a new era of disease resistance breeding.

Sophien Kamoun grew up in Tunisia where he developed a passion and curiosity about nature. He studied genetics in Paris and Davis, California, before working in Wageningen, Ohio and Norwich, where he is currently a Senior Scientist at The Sainsbury Laboratory and Professor of Biology at The University of East Anglia. He is known for his seminal contributions to our understanding of plant diseases and plant immunity having pioneered genomics and molecular biology methods to reveal fundamental insights into the biology and evolution of eukaryotic plant pathogens. His inventive work in plant pathology has resulted in new approaches to mitigate some of the world’s most serious crop diseases. He is well-known as a champion of open science, including open data, transparent peer review, and preprints to promote rapid dissemination of science. Professor Kamoun has received many awards and recognitions, notably the Kuwait Prize and The Linnean Medal. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018.

Kamoun Lab Web Site http://www.kamounlab.net

Twitter @KamounLab http://twitter.com/kamounlab

Medium https://kamounlab.medium.com/

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophien_Kamoun

"How To Use Six Genes To Conquer a Plant: Learning From Geminiviruses"

Viruses, as obligate intracellular parasites, need to subvert the host cell in order to enable their replication and efficient spread. Due to strict restrictions in genome size, viruses commonly produce a limited number of proteins; this is the case of geminiviruses, plant viruses with circular single-stranded (ss)DNA genomes that are believed to contain only 4-8 translated open reading frames. Strikingly, despite their limited armoury, geminiviruses are able to establish an infection, overcoming plant defence, dramatically altering plant development and physiology, and ultimately causing devastating diseases to crops worldwide. How these viruses successfully invade and manipulate their plant hosts by deploying only a handful of proteins is a long-standing, fascinating question.

In our group, we are interested in understanding how geminiviruses co-opt the plant cell and lead to disease, for which we use a combination of approaches, including molecular biology, cell biology, and genetics. Our results have shed light onto the molecular mechanisms underlying the replication of viral DNA, plant anti-viral defence and geminiviral counter-defence, and symptom development, and hint at novel virulence strategies potentially employed by geminiviruses to maximize their coding capacity and their impact on the host cell. We expect that our work will contribute to a deeper understanding of the infection process, which may in turn pave the way to the design of effective and sustainable anti-viral strategies and assist breeding programs to obtain virus-resistant plants.

Register

The 2024 PMB Retreat will return to the Holiday Inn Resort at Wrightsville Beach and will feature keynote speaker Lars Østergaard from the John Innes Center and the University of Oxford. 

Stay tuned for more information regarding registration, hotel reservations and abstract submissions!

Doug Cook
University of California, Davis

Marc Libault
University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Hilde Nilissen
Ghent University

Claudia Kohler
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology

Yanhai Yin
Iowa State University

The 2022 PMB Retreat was held at the Holiday Inn Resort in Wrightsville Beach from October 14-16. A detailed agenda and abstract links are available on our event page.

Keynote Speaker: Jose Dinneny, Standford University

Capstone Speaker: Kultaran Chohan, NC State University