Helen Brabham

Co-option of transcription factors drives evolution of quantitative disease resistance against a necrotrophic pathogen Quantitative disease resistance in a wild tomato genotype evolved through species-specific regulatory network rewiring, with an ancient transcription facto

Did you ever wonder how #Solanum plants evolved quantitative disease resistance/ #QDR?
I am really excited to share our recently published manuscript, where we tried to contribute to addressing this question!

🌱https://tinyurl.com/2vz23ck6

Dual recognition of structurally unrelated mildew effectors underlies the broad-spectrum resistance of Pm3e in wheat Broad-spectrum resistance genes are highly valuable for sustainable crop protection, yet the molecular basis of their activity is often unknown. The Pm3 allelic series in wheat encodes NLR receptors t...

A wheat NLR conferring broad-spectrum resistance against powdery mildew by recognizing two structurally diverse AVR effectors. Interested? Check out our newest preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Electrostatic changes enabled the diversification of an exocyst subunit via protein complex escape - Nature Plants The evolutionary diversification of an exocyst subunit was enabled by electrostatic shifts leading to its dissociation from the ancestral complex.

My main work as postdoc @plantophagy.bsky.social lab in @gmivienna.bsky.social is out in @natplants.nature.com 🌱🎉

We asked how can protein complexes diversify without compromising their function and explored this question using the plant #exocyst complex.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

'Identifying the safe operating space for food systems'

Highly relevant new paper by Sofie te Wierik et al. in Nature Food www.nature.com/articles/s43...

The paper shows: i) food systems are the single-largest pressure across Earth system processes, ii) all food system boundaries are transgressed

Postdoc position in my lab in Cologne starting early next year or latest in spring to get this exciting project started.

jobportal.uni-koeln.de/ausschreibun...

Interlocus gene conversion causes mosaic divergence in tandem paralogues - simulating HMA4 evolution in Arabidopsis halleri https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.29.685298v1

Good read. #AcademicSky

Hi Gaurav, thanks for sharing! The pipeline is described in the materials and methods and uses publicly available tools for NLR annotation and expression analyses. We are also working on machine learning approaches with this data but this is not published yet.

Very excited to see the final version of our kingdom-scale fungal genome defense manuscript out in @plosbiology.org !

This work has been a major project of @tbadet.bsky.social during his time in our lab.

We hope to stimulate much more exciting work on fungal TEs.

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Rewriting the code of plant immunity go.nature.com/475WgV7

Metacaspase–Peps–PEPR: The 3 musketeers in boosting wheat resistance against Fusarium head blight Plants truly do not have an easy life. They are exposed to multiple stresses around the clock, including climatic extremes and numerous pathogens. Stressed

IN BRIEF: Metacaspase-Peps-PEPR: The three musketeers in boosting wheat resistance against Fusarium head blight (Margot Raffeiner) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience

Mechanisms, Detection, and Impact of Horizontal Gene Transfer in Plant Functional Evolution Abstract. Horizontal gene transfers (HGT) have been observed across the tree of life. While their adaptive importance in bacteria is conspicuous, the occur

Mechanisms, Detection, and Impact of Horizontal Gene Transfer in Plant Functional Evolution (Lee Mariault , Camille Puginier , Jean Keller , Moaine El Baidouri , Pierre-Marc Delaux) doi.org/10.1093/plce... #PlantScience

Engineered pattern recognition receptors enhance broad-spectrum plant resistance - @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social go.nature.com/474nnA9

The mystery of redundancy between homoeologs continues! Knocking out one homoeolog in wheat doesn't cause the other homoeologs to be upregulated... nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Great work led by @delfidorussen.bsky.social with @emilieknight.bsky.social @simmojsimmo.bsky.social

Exploring fern pathosystems and immune receptors to bridge gaps in plant immunity - BMC Biology Land plants include angiosperms, gymnosperms, bryophytes, lycophytes, and ferns, each of which may deploy distinct strategies to resist pathogens. Here, we investigate fern-pathogen interactions by characterizing novel pathosystems and analyzing the diversity of fern immune receptors. A collection of fern species was inoculated with a diverse set of filamentous microbes, and disease symptoms were assessed. We further leveraged published genome mining tools to analyse the diversity of receptor-like kinases, receptor-like proteins (RLKs/RLPs) and nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeats (NLRs), along with key immune signalling components, in ferns. Our results reveal that ferns exhibit a range of responses to pathogens, including putative non-host resistance and more specific resistance mechanisms. Among ten ferns tested, Pteris vittata displays the broadest spectrum of pathogen compatibility. Genome mining indicates that ferns encode a diverse repertoire of putative immune receptors, antimicrobial peptides, and mediators of systemic acquired resistance. Ferns possess numerous RLKs/RLPs, resembling those required for cell-surface immunity in angiosperms. They also encode diverse NLRs, including sub-families lost in flowering plants. These findings provide insights into disease resistance evolution and open promising perspectives for crop protection strategies.

1\ bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
🌿🌿Our article on fern immunity has been peer-reviewed 🌿🌿
Thanks to @madeleinebaker.bsky.social @kellerjeanphd.bsky.social @maximebonhomme.bsky.social @pierremarcdelaux.bsky.social and @jacquet-chris.bsky.social

a quick thread 🧵 1/4

Discovery of functional NLRs using expression level, high-throughput transformation and large-scale phenotyping Nature Plants - Rapid discovery of functional resistance genes is enabled by a high-expression signature and high-throughput transformation. This approach identified 31 new resistance genes for...

Super excited to see our work on the NLRseek program finally published 🥳 Here we identify new NLRs against major wheat pathogens and present a pipeline for NLR identification. Huge thank you to all of the co-authors for bringing this work together! @matthewmoscou.bsky.social rdcu.be/eIGvv

The dawn of the post-literate society And the end of civilisation

This is fantastic by @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social Articulates so well our (intentional?) societal regression

Common mycorrhizal networks facilitate plant disease resistance by altering rhizosphere microbiome assembly Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can interconnect the roots of individual plants by forming common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs). These symbiotic structures can act as conduits for interplant communication. Despite their importance, the mechanisms of signal transfer via CMNs and their implications for plant community performance remain unknown. Here, we demonstrate that CMNs act as a pathway to elicit defense responses in healthy receiver plants connected to pathogen-infected donors. Specifically, we show that donor plants infected by the phytopathogen Botrytis cinerea transfer jasmonic acid via CMNs, which then act as a chemical signal in receiver plants. This signal transfer to receiver plants induces shifts in root exudates, promoting the recruitment of specific microbial taxa (Streptomyces and Actinoplanes) that are directly linked to the suppression of B. cinerea infection. Collectively, our study reveals that CMNs act as interplant chemical communication conduits, transferring signals that contribute to plant disease resistance via modulation of the rhizosphere microbiota.

Excellent paper from @mrillig.bsky.social and coll. ->  Common mycorrhizal networks facilitate plant disease resistance by altering rhizosphere microbiome assembly - ScienceDirect

Very excited to have our small contribution to the growing Starship field now published @mbio.bsky.social, as always a great peer review process with one of my favorite society journals

From genes to epidemics: Genomic insights into bacterial plant pathogen emergence Bacterial phytopathogens are major causal agents of newly emerging plant diseases. The roles of both agricultural practices and the alteration of bact…

Happy to share the first paper from my lab! We wrote a review on bacterial plant pathogen evolution 🧫 🌱 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @microsky.bsky.social @plantsky.bsky.social

Drought recovery in plants triggers a cell-state-specific immune activation - Nature Communications Post-drought rehydration triggers a preventive immune response in plants, revealing targets to enhance crop resilience by linking drought stress recovery with improved pathogen resistance.

Our #research on #drought #recovery, now published with @springernature.com in @natcomms.nature.com:
Drought recovery in plants triggers a cell-state-specific immune activation.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Read thread below 👇

Regulatory features determine the evolutionary fate of laterally acquired genes in plants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.22.671697v1

An interesting sentiment; bringing more critical thinking, analysis, and interdisciplinary work across all courses is crucial to develop and empower students in the age of AI.

OpenAI’s Waterloo? [with corrections] Post GPT-5, the narrative has flipped — and that could hurt them

"Science is not a popularity contest; you can’t bully your way to truth … Science simply cannot advance without people sticking to the truth even in the face of opposition"

I can think of a few people outside AI who also need to hear this...

garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-wa...

Woah! Such an important study published in Nature today! Quick thread with some of their key figures!
🧵

VACANCY

Optical Microscopy Specialist

Come work alongside the plant and microbial scientists at JIC and help us explore the biological frontier at the tissue, cell and subcellular scale!

This is not the time to step back from diversity, equity, and inclusion Recently, I exchanged views with a prominent Ivy League scientist who was complaining about the minority students and junior faculty applying to his program. He claimed that the university, through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, was ...

This is not the time to step back from diversity, equity, and inclusion | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

"This raises the possibility that the fitness costs of other commonly studied immune system genes may be grossly misjudged without field studies." 🌱 Great to see work including environmental variation and community effects.

🚨 Our Nature paper is out!
We present a chromosome-scale assembly of a wild barley relative, unlocking insights into virus resistance and genome evolution 🌾🧬
My contribution focused on dissecting the BYDV resistance locus.
#PlantScience #Genomics #Barley #BYDV #NaturePaper

Research Associate in Programmable Plant Immunity at Imperial College London Apply for the Research Associate in Programmable Plant Immunity role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

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...