Samuel Eastman

Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization Plant roots release exudates to encourage microbiome assembly, which influences the function and stress resilience of plants. How specific exudates drive spatial colonization patterns remains largely ...

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

Color changing flowers 🧬🎨- attempt #2

Older flowers (bottom) show dark red/ orange tints whereas young buds (top) display strong fuchsia color. Getting closer..

What's the coverage of the plasmid? Is it enough to make you confident that sequence mutations are legitimate? Thinking of doing this also.

Friday Flower 001: Mimulus lewisii 🌸✨

Monkeyflowers are masterpieces of design with nectar-guide spots formed by an activator–inhibitor system of MYB transcription factors. These generate reaction–diffusion patterns across the ventral petal.

New prepint ‼️

We studied how the 3 T6SSs of P. putida shape the rhizobiota of tomato plants. Spoiler alert: K2- and K3-T6SS do not kill E. coli, but they are functional in the rhizosphere. In collaboration with the lab of Prof. Marta Martin & Rafael Rivilla @uam.es

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I found this article, particularly the descriptions generated by chatGPT, uncomfortable to read.

That being said, if the article were instead "I googled 'how to make a blood offering to moelock'" and a detailed description of what the author found on an obscure website, would I feel differently?

On this matter, I'll take what I can get. If Trump turns his ire from American institutions to Putin for the next 3 years, I'll breath easier.

Tuition fees for postdocs!?😱

Thus, Verticillium dahliae uses Av2 to suppress Pseudomonas recruitment upon pathogen invasion to suppress the plant’s cry for help, revealing a sophisticated pathogen sabotage of microbiota-mediated host defence responses. Happy to hear your feedback! {END} www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump

A handful of US scientists will continue their research in foreign countries. Most of them will simply stop doing research altogether.

Tariffs and the constricting supply change will further squeeze research labs reeling from funding cuts. In my lab, we are have already seen the price of some consumables double.

Interesting that the most-used terminators in plant engineering (35S, nos, and ocs) are all from cross-kingdom genes meant to be expressed in plants by pathogens

The Arabidopsis TIRome informs the design of artificial TIR (Toll/interleukin-1 receptor) domain proteins The TIR (Toll/interleukin-1 receptor) domain is an ancient protein module that functions in immune and cell death responses across the Tree of Life. TIR domains encoded by plants and prokaryotes funct...

📜 The Arabidopsis TIRome informs the design of artificial TIR (Toll/interleukin-1 receptor) domain proteins

🧑‍🔬 Adam M. Bayless, Lijiang Song, Mitchell Sorbello, Murray Grant, Marc T. Nishimura, et al.

📔 @biorxiv-plants.bsky.social

🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#️⃣ #PlantScience #PlantImmunity

A very interesting study! I find it very curious that SNPs or deletions of a TNL seems to reduce the weight of the plants in all conditions tested. Could the TNL MMF1 be acting as a negative regulator of immunity? Perhaps this is why the MMF1 SNPs have the most pronounced positive feedback

A TNL receptor mediates microbiome feedbacks in Arabidopsis Plant performance depends on the soil microbiome. While microbiome feedbacks are well documented, the mechanisms by which plants perceive and mediate these feedbacks remain unclear. We established a f...

Preprint alert: Here we report MMF1 - "a microbiota receptor” - through which Arabidopsis plants perceive their soil microbiome. Perception optimises root microbiome composition, immune status and ultimately leads to better growth.

Happy reading...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Conserved immunomodulation and variation in host association by Xanthomonadales commensals in Arabidopsis root microbiota Nature Plants - The authors show that immunosuppression is highly conserved in the bacterial order Xanthomonadales. This feature, which preceded their specialization as host-adapted pathogens,...

Congratulations to Jana Ordon and all coauthors!!! Our new study is published in @natureplants.bsky.social
"Conserved immunomodulation and variation in host association by Xanthomonadales commensals in Arabidopsis root microbiota" (0/n)
rdcu.be/eauzt

Here we show that transmitting the Microbiome can transfer a host trait, independently of selection on the host genome. In mice, with selection for low activity levels. Correlates with levels of lactobacilli and indolelactate: transferring these alone also reduces activity.

dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs....

Just 3 more weeks to apply for the Princeton EEB Fellows Program! 🌵🦥🦩🦠🧫🌻Please identify at least 2 faculty collaborators, craft your research program, & apply here:

puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

@sse-evolution.bsky.social
@asn-amnat.bsky.social
@eseb.bsky.social
Please repost &/or apply!

For those whose links aren't working, delete "admin-" in the "https://admin-ethics.house...." links.

Very happy to see this out in Cell Reports! It was conducted by myself and my fellow co-first authors Ting Jiang and Kaeli Ficco in the Conway Lab in Princeton's department of chemical and biological engineering! Check it out now! doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

In short, commensal Xanthomonadales bacteria like Dyella japonica secrete the type II subtilase IssA that cleaves immune elicitors like flg22 and suppresses plant immune activation.

We found IssA homologs in all of our suppressive Xanthomonadales, and we found it contributed to suppression of flg22-induced immune activation in all of those tested. This suggests secretion of PAMP-degrading subtilases is evolutionarily conserved. Think of them like "chill pills"!

This cleavage matches patterns observed from plant-secreted subtilases! Check out this very recent paper @pierrebuscaill.bsky.social for more on that!

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

bsky.app/profile/pier...

IssA cleaves flg22 (both the canonical sequence, and the altered sequence from Dyella japonica) as well as the immune elicitor peptide AtPEP1 in vitro, and we observed specific fragments generated from this cleavage.

We found a type II secreted effector in Dyella japonica which, spoilers, we named "Immunosuppressive subtilase A", or IssA. IssA is enzymatically active serine protease which contributes Dyella japonica's suppression of flg22-induced immune activation. (In the figure, blue roots=immune activation)

One of our best suppressors in this cluster of Xanthomonadales is Dyella japonica (Dja) MF79. Prior work indicated Dja MF79 uses its type II secretion system to secrete a factor, larger than 10 kDa, capable of suppressing flg22-induced immune activation. Sound like a protein? We thought so too!

We assumed that bacteria that could suppress flg22-induced root growth inhibition would be equally good at suppressing flg22-induced root growth inhibition…but we were wrong! We found some could suppress one more effectively than the other. 🤔

This cluster of bacteria is interesting: they are all really good at blocking flg22-induced root growth inhibition! All of these isolates are from order Xanthomonadales. Do they share a conserved mechanism? More on that in a moment.