Isabel Monte

The unique architecture of umbrella toxins permits a two-tiered molecular bet-hedging strategy for interbacterial antagonism Umbrella toxin particles produced by Actinobacteria contain five spokes tipped with variable lectin domains. Here, Zhao et al. show that these lectins mediate species-specific binding to a previously ...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes Romeijn et al. reveal that horizontal transposon transfer is widespread in fungi, contributing up to 70% of transposon content in some taxa. The authors uncover thousands of events across diverse line...

Extensive horizontal transfer of transposable elements shapes fungal mobilomes

@currentbiology.bsky.social by @jromeijn.bsky.social et al from @mfseidl.bsky.social

www.cell.com/current-biol...

CC-NLRs exhibit diverse conformations in the resting state. Figure depicts different NLR resting and activated states. While ZAR1 exists as a monomer bound to its guardees in its resting state, several forms have been observed for the NRC2 helper, including dimers, tetramers, and filaments. While filament-like structures were observed via confocal microscopy for NRC2 upon overexpression in planta, these structures were not detected for its paralog NRC4, suggesting a potentially different resting state configuration for NRC4. Our work suggests that the Pik CC-NLR pair forms a hetero-complex bound to the plasma membrane in its resting state. How effector binding to the integrated domain (ID) of the Pik-1 sensor leads to the activation of the complex remains to be determined.

Excited to share our latest work on plant immune receptor biochemistry! @kamounlab.bsky.social @hsuanpai.bsky.social @mpcontreras.bsky.social Jose Salguero Linares @danielluedke.bsky.social @adnroide.bsky.social @jiorgoskourelis.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congrats, Monica! 🥳🥳🥳

After four years of hard work and late nights, I’m incredibly happy to share that yesterday I successfully defended my DPhil in Biology at the University of Oxford - with only minor corrections! 🎉

Feeling excited and ready for the next chapter!

Have you ever wondered how it is possible that systemically infected plants produce (a certain percentage of) healthy progeny? 💚

Check out the first preprint of the @incavirus.bsky.social lab and first preprint of my postdoc! 🍀

We'd be very happy about feedback and discussions!

***Super cool-project alert***⚠️ Come work with @dirkmetzler.bsky.social and me in trying to understand how transcriptional noise evolves in a phylogenetic context 🧬 Deadline 15th Dec 2025 (Project funded by @dfg.de @gevol.bsky.social)

PhD opportunity in our lab - deadline passes on Dec 2nd - don’t miss out!

Delphine Pott (left) and Marco Incarbone (right) standing in front of a yellow wall and next to a window facade in an office building. Both are smiling.

Great talk by @delphinem-p.bsky.social from @geminiteamlab.bsky.social yesterday: “Hijacking the Plant #Spliceosome” on how alternative splicing drives #viral infection and #tomato fruit development 🍅

Thanks to our host @incavirus.bsky.social for organizing this insightful seminar! 👏

This year’s @embo.org Workshop is held at the @viennabiocenter.bsky.social. Open to 120 participants, it is over-enrolled with 180 attendees! Thank you to the organizers @isabelmonte.bsky.social, Aino Komatsu, @moodytomato.bsky.social, and Liam Dolan for making this event possible. #EMBOplantEvo

Pan-family pollen signals control an interspecific stigma barrier across Brassicaceae species Pre-zygotic interspecific incompatibility prevents hybridization between species limiting interbreeding strategies for crop improvement using wild relatives. The Brassica rapa female self-incompatibil...

Out First Release in @science.org
A pollen ligand, SIPS, binds to the female receptor, SRK. SIPS binds to a conserved region of SRK, for interspecific incompatibility, unlike the self-incompatibility factor, which binds to a different, variable region
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#PlantScience

Join us this Friday for another exciting talk in our DSSS series by Prof. Ueli Grossniklaus from the University of Zürich. Everyone welcome!

▶️More info: shorturl.at/4804F
📆: Friday 28th November at 3pm
📍: Max Planck House lecture hall, Max-Planck-Ring 6 (ground floor)
#DSSS

To all visionary microbe enthusiasts: @femsmicro.org is looking for an editor-in-chief for their flagship journal FEMS Microbiology Reviews! More details can be found here: fems-microbiology.org/opportunitie...

Visited Margot Smit @likeyoda1.bsky.social in Tübingen. Such a nice reunion after 6 years! Impressed by the beautiful city and the bryophyte-friendly botanical garden.

Box 1. (shortened, full legend in paper): Key developments in understanding the role of CLE signalling in plant development. This scheme represents a summary on the selected latest advances in CLE signalling. (A) In a series of publications, Yuki Hirakawa and his team (Takahashi et al., 2021, 2023) characterized the CLE pathway in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha that positively controls cell divisions via repressing the transcription factor JINGASA. (B) In Arabidopsis, CLV3/CLV1 signalling in the shoot was found to be buffering auxin-dependent development under different thermal conditions (John et al., 2023). (C) Research from several teams showed that the BAM3/CLE pathway is crucial for root protophloem development (Hu et al., 2018, 2022; Qian et al., 2022; Carbonnel et al., 2023). Moreover, the study by Carbonnel et al. (2023) identified an uncharacterized Arabidopsis CLE33 gene that acted in concert with CLE45 via BAM3 in root protophloem development.

🌱 EXPERT VIEW 🌱

In all land plants, small secreted peptides belonging to the CLE family move from cell to cell and activate their cognate receptors to control a plethora of developmental processes - Cornelis & Hazak

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 @hazaklab.bsky.social

a figure showing a life restoration of an adult oxroadia, which has many sinuous green stem branching across the ground, and two smaller diagrams of a juvenile plant and a close up of the rooting system.

Congratulations to @jeremywyman.bsky.social et al 2025 for the publication of their Oxroadia paper! And thanks for bringing me onboard to do some restorations of this relative of Lepidodendron and Isoëtes from the Carboniferous of Scotland.
academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...
#FossilFriday #paleobotany

Another paper showing that the fungus Trichoderma associates with #Marchantia in a natural environment! 😎

Our new collaborative work led by @taliamycota.bsky.social
Jiajun Cui & Emma Caullireau between my lab @ucllifesciences.bsky.social @cloeucl.bsky.social & the Karasov Lab (tkarasovlab.org) @uofubiology.bsky.social
and collaborators: @plantricia.bsky.social et al.

tinyurl.com/5yx2wmz5

(1/n)

Evolutionary trade-off between stomatal defense and gas exchange in Brassicaceae Kang et al. show that coronatine hijacks the ABA hydroxylase CYP707A1 in A. thaliana to override stomatal defense. While CYP707A1 also enables rapid light-induced stomatal opening, C. rubella and E. s...

Our ten years of work is finally out in Current Biology! We reveal a new mode of action of the bacterial phytotoxin coronatine produced by Pseudomonas syringae. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Last days to apply for the Research Highlights editor positions @theplantjournal.bsky.social
Develop scientific writing and communication skills, gain an insight into scientific publishing and work with an enthusiastic editorial team.
deadline nov 24th

💪🏽 Very proud of Catarina Lino for facilitating the first ever sequencing of a plant genome on Zimbabwean soil, together with local organiser and collaborator Prince Marowa. The workshop's lecture... 💪🏽 Very proud of Catarina Lino for facilitating the first ever sequencing of a plant genome on Zimbabwean soil, together with local organiser and collaborator Prince Marowa. The workshop's lecture ser...

Very proud of Catarina Lino for facilitating the first ever sequencing of a plant genome on Zimbabwean soil, together with local organiser and collaborator Prince Marowa.
With thanks to the Max Planck Society ARTEMIS Bridging Minds and the University of Zimbabwe! www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-pat...

Now online in its final version. Plz surf to doi.org/10.1111/tpj....

Consistently an absolutely fantastic meeting - don’t miss out on an opportunity to interact with an awesome bunch of non-seed enthusiasts 🌱 😃 🧬

A common pathway controls cell size in the sepal and leaf epidermis leading to a nonrandom pattern of giant cells Arabidopsis leaf epidermal cells have a wide range of sizes and ploidies, but the mechanisms patterning their size and spatial distribution remain unclear. This study shows that the pathway controllin...

Check out our story in @plosbiology.org about how a nonrandom, clustered giant cell pattern forms in the sepal and leaf epidermis! It has been a great journey with @gweissbart.bsky.social, Frances Clark, Xihang Wang, @roederlab.bsky.social and co-authors.
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Antagonism between blue and red light-signalling controls thallus flatness in Marchantia polymorpha https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687525v1

¡Seguimos con la #SemanaDeLaCiencia!

Hoy en el #CNB_CSIC, los y las participantes han conocido más sobre Biomagen y técnicas de visualización avanzada: Criomicroscopía Electrónica, Microscopía Óptica Avanzada, Pinzas Ópticas…🔬¡De la célula a la molécula!

#SemanaCienciaCSIC
@csicdivulga.bsky.social

Inspiring visit and exciting talk by @likeyoda1.bsky.social today in @psb-vib.bsky.social. Impressive progress after starting her lab only 2 years ago!

Hydathodes at the forefront of plant immunity against vascular pathogens Hydathodes are tiny plant organs that form an interface between the leaf surface and xylem vasculature. They facilitate excretion of xylem fluid under…

We wrote a review 📖 on hydathode immunity! Learn how bacteria exploit hydathodes to access the vasculature and open questions for future research.

📣 If you are curious about this topic, please consider applying for two open positions in my lab (until Nov23)! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Symbiotic diversification relies on an ancestral gene network in plants Symbioses have been fundamental to colonization of terrestrial ecosystems by plants and their evolution. Emergence of the ancient arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis was followed by the diversification o...

1/ It is my pleasure to share the latest preprint of the team: "Symbiotic diversification relies on an ancestral gene network in plants"

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Here, we identified and functionally validated a novel master regulator of intracellular symbioses!

A thread ...
#PlantScience

Thanks a lot Isa @isabelmonte.bsky.social👩‍🔬for accepting our invitation🤩. Such a terrific talk, opening up new research lines hand-in-hand with #Trichoderma. MPMI in its purest state!!! Special thanks to @agrienvironcyl.bsky.social for funding the visit, and many more yet to come. 🌿🧫🦠🧬