Justin Lee (IPB)

Structural basis of canonical TIR-NLR activation in plant innate immunity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.03.703613v1

Plants use cell-surface and intracellular receptors that collaborate to detect pathogens🦠. We discovered that a key #ubiquitin recognition event recruits both receptor types into an unexpected dual receptor complex that boost the translation of defence proteins and establishes robust #PlantImmunity👇🏾

Postdomestication selection of MKK3 shaped seed dormancy and end-use traits in barley Anthropogenic selection of grain traits such as dormancy has shaped the developmental trajectories of crops. In cereals, shortening dormancy provides rapid and even post-harvest germination, but incre...

Out First Release in @science.org
Exploring how MKK3 variation affects the balance between dormancy and preharvest sprouting in barley:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#plantscience

Examples of biomolecular condensates in environmental response.

Transcriptional outputs and condensates – formation and function

#TansleyInsight by Hutin et al.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#plantscience

Happy to contribute to the excellent work from our collaborators where "1 + 1 ≠ 2". Instead of increased susceptibility to #rice_blast, loss of 2 CPK5 paralogs led to #Effector-triggered_immunity (ETI)-type of resistance, thus showing importance of #calcium_signalling.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Happy to contribute to writing this review on calcium signalling & plant immunity (with the team from Tina Romeis's group). A main takeaway is that "responsiveness" states of sensors can explain most of the Decoding via Calcium signature/Chemical switch.
doi.org/10.1016/j.pb...

New Letter: "Large-scale pairing identifies a soybean phytocytokine-receptor module conferring disease resistance" rdcu.be/eBmrZ

Scalable pipeline for systematic peptide–receptor discovery. In soybean, identification of a PEP914/890-P98R module in disease resistance.

Introducing Pattern Recognition Receptors in Potato Confers Enhanced Resistance to Ralstonia solanacearum but Not a Vector Borne Pathogen Click on the article title to read more.

Sometimes the most useful insights come from what doesn’t work. We tested a dual PRR stack: LORE blocked Ralstonia, while FLS2xl could sense Ca. Liberibacter flg22 but didn’t stop infection. Congrats to @jerrytli.bsky.social and all co-authors! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I'm looking for a PhD student to join my group starting 1st July 2025. Please apply by 31st Mar via the following link:
rtg2498.uni-halle.de/application_...

Thanks for making the trip. Excellent feedback from all the people who met you - in particular the students. We highly appreciate your scientific input and look forward to collaborating.

The OXIDATIVE SIGNAL-INDUCIBLE1 kinase regulates plant immunity by linking microbial pattern–induced reactive oxygen species burst to MAP kinase activation A reactive oxygen species (ROS)–activated kinase, OXIDATIVE SIGNAL-INDUCIBLE1, participates in pattern recognition receptor complexes and regulates plant i

academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

One of the department Chairs in my Institute (Leibniz Inst. of Plant Biochemistry, IPB) is opened for application. Come shape the future of IPB!
see the link:
www.ipb-halle.de/en/career/jo...