Van Schepler-Luu

Fatal Fungus Turns Beetles’ Chemical Shields Into a Deadly Weakness Learn more about the chemical arms race between a fungus, a tree, and a beetle.

Nice write-up of a recent @pnas.org paper from Jonathan Gershenzon's lab in @discovermag.bsky.social:

Tree produces antifungal toxin, Beetle eats from the tree & uses toxin against fungus, Fungus converts antifungal toxin into insecticidal toxin, kills the beetle & protects the Tree.

#PlantScience

2025 Research Highlights from our International Rice False Smut Consortium.

minixites.preview-beefreecontent.com/zwM5

We sincerely thank the John Templeton Foundation for supporting the Consortium and all 25 members from 12 countries for developing solutions to combat this rice disease.

Crop pest responses to global changes in climate and land management - Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Crop yield losses to insect pests pose a risk to food security. This Review assesses global trends of crop pest prevalence associated with global environmental change, identifies the underlying ecolog...

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Weekend read on one of my favourite topic: the plant #pathobiome.

Screenshot from GRC portal confirming microbial population biology meeting June 27, 2027 in Andover, New Hampshire.

It’s officially happening folks! The Microbial Population Biology Gordon Research Conference is back in Andover, New Hampshire starting June 27th of 2027!
See you there!!

@wcratcliff.bsky.social @ksbakes.bsky.social @surtlab.bsky.social

#microsky #mevosky

Designing field-ready biocontrol: discovery–syncom–validation - Plant Biotechnology Reports Plant Biotechnology Reports - Biocontrol offers a promising route to reduce agriculture’s reliance on synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, yet successes with single strains seldom scale to...

Designing field-ready biocontrol: discovery–syncom–validation

in Plant Biotechnology Reports

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Contrasting responses of rhizosphere microbial guild to nitrogen enrichment are associated with mycorrhizal plant type Plants establish symbiotic relationships with various mycorrhizal fungi, which may represent a crucial mechanism for different modes of nutrient cycling and soil ecological processes. However, our understanding of rhizosphere-specific microbial traits—such as fungal functional guilds and bacterial life-history strategies (copiotrophic vs. oligotrophic)—at the individual mycorrhizal tree species level remains limited. In this study, we examined how N addition (47.5 g N m−2 yr−1) affects bacterial and fungal communities in the rhizosphere of two dominant subtropical tree species: Castanopsis hystrix, an ectomycorrhizal (ECM) tree species, and Phoebe bournei, an arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) tree species. We used amplicon sequencing and ecological trait-based analyses to conduct this research. Nitrogen enrichment led to a reduction in bacterial α-diversity, favouring copiotrophic Gammaproteobacteria and r-strategists while suppressing oligotrophic groups, such as Acidobacteriia, Alphaproteobacteria, and Acidimicrobiia, along with K-strategists. Furthermore, adding N increased heterogeneity in bacterial β-diversity between mycorrhizal plant types, resulting in divergent shifts in copiotrophic and oligotrophic bacterial groups. This shift amplified community differentiation specific to the mycorrhizal plant type rather than promoting convergence. Fungal responses to N addition varied based on the host mycorrhizal plant type. In AM-associated P. bournei, N addition decreased the relative abundance of symbiotrophic AM fungi and reduced fungal α-diversity. Conversely, in ECM-associated C. hystrix, N addition suppressed both saprotrophic and symbiotrophic ECM fungi while increasing α-diversity, likely due to the growth of pathotrophic taxa. Despite these contrasting responses, N addition homogenised fungal β-diversity across mycorrhizal plant types, reducing differences among mycorrhizal-specific fungal guilds. Structural equation modelling revealed that soil N and P availability were the primary drivers of bacterial community restructuring. In contrast, fungal assemblages were impacted by both soil chemistry and root traits, notably fine root length. These findings highlight that N enrichment disrupts mycorrhizal plant type-specific microbial niche partitioning in subtropical forests, favouring copiotrophic bacteria and separating fungal communities from host identities, a potential mechanism driving ecosystem-level functional changes under elevated N deposition.

Contrasting responses of rhizosphere microbial guild to nitrogen enrichment are associated with mycorrhizal plant type - ScienceDirect

My new Emmy Noether Group is recruiting!

🔬 Two PhD positions in plant pathogen evolution

🧬 Start: April 2026 (flexible)

📍 Dept. of Phytopathology & Plant Protection @rstam.bsky.social @uni-kiel.de

⏰ Apply by 15 Dec 2025

🔗 More info: www.uni-kiel.de/personal/de/...

Do get in touch or share 😊

Handbook of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi The Handbook of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi 2e is an indispensable resource for undergraduate students and early-career researchers seeking a comprehensive introduction to the field of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). It provides a foundational understanding of AMF biology, classification, and ecological significance, presenting up-to-date information and protocols in a clear and accessible manner.

Handbook of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi

Fixing Hybrid Rice: >99% Efficient Apomixis with Near-Normal Seed Set Apomixis, a form of clonal seed reproduction, offers a transformative approach to agriculture by enabling the stable fixation of hybrid vigor and elite heterozygosity across generations. However, the ...

Another gene (a sperm specific transcription factor) was found to induce parthenogenesis in rice when ectopically expressed in the egg cell. I can't find the gene ID in the preprint though.

"Fixing Hybrid Rice: >99% Efficient Apomixis with Near-Normal Seed Set"
(www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...).

Oomycetes manipulate plant innate immunity through galacturonide oxidases - Nature Communications The oomycete Phytophthora infestans is a damaging crop pathogen. Here, the authors show that a group of P. infestans secreted enzymes play roles in penetration and colonization of host plants by oxidi...

Novel insights into CAZY pathogenicity factor AA7 involved in plant immune-modulatory function: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Save the Date: #PPATH2026, Norwich, 8–10 September 2026 @BS_PP

A quantitative microbiome atlas reveals hidden diversity, eukaryotic keystones, and evolutionary trade-offs in plant rhizospheres. www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...

PhD in Biostimulants & Nitrogen Use Efficiency at UniLaSalle & Gaïago, France A fully funded CIFRE PhD position is open at UniLaSalle Rouen, France, in collaboration with Gaïago. The research focuses on biostimulants and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in wheat and maize to support sustainable and resilient agroecosystems. Start date: January 2026.

PhD in Biostimulants & Nitrogen Use Efficiency at UniLaSalle & Gaïago, France

A fully funded CIFRE PhD position is open at UniLaSalle Rouen, France, in collaboration with Gaïago. The research focuses on biostimulants and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in wheat and maize to support sustainable and…

We have a diverse, international PhD program with English as our working language. We have 20+ fully-funded positions in this call for talented MSc students. Start your application by 10 October
training.vbc.ac.at/p...
@univie.ac.at
@impvienna.bsky.social
@imbavienna.bsky.social

The Plant Genome Call for Papers Rice Genomics <em>The Plant Genome</em> is an open access journal providing the latest advances and breakthroughs in plant genomics research, including genome analyses and engineering.

Submit here: acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/...

The Plant Genome Call for Papers Rice Genomics <em>The Plant Genome</em> is an open access journal providing the latest advances and breakthroughs in plant genomics research, including genome analyses and engineering.

Call for Papers on Rice Genomics!

As IRRI celebrates 65 years of rice science and 20 years since the first rice genome was sequenced, we invite research contributions to a special issue of The Plant Genome to commemorate these milestones.

🗓 Deadline: 31 December 2025

Happy to have contributed to this nice review

Glad to be part of this team calling on global scientific and conservation communities to get on board to protect microbial life, which sustains all forms of life on our planet.

in @natmicrobiol.nature.com

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

Our President Elect, Saskia Hogenhout, discusses her lab's work on aphid effectors, which are secreted during feeding and suppress plant immunity by recruiting defence proteins to processing bodies. #PPATH2025

Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Published:
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Assistant Professor in Plant Science Contribute to innovative Plant Science research using world-class facilities to unravel how plants cope with stressful abiotic environments.

www.uu.nl/en/organisat...

Research Associate-Fixed Term - East Lansing, Michigan, United States Position Summary The Li lab in the Department of Plant Biology is recruiting a postdoctoral research associate to work on project(s) in plant molecular biology, biochemistry, and/or genomics. The idea...

MSU is great place to do plant science research. My lab will be a great place to develop new expertise in genomics and plant molecular biology.

Application instruction and link: careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

Please email me if you have any questions.

Interested in exploring prophages in your (meta)genomes, but don't know how and where to start? We've put together a beginners guide to exploring viral diversity in prokaryotes @marievasse.bsky.social
@sebwielgoss.bsky.social
@oxunipress.bsky.social

PanGene-O-Meter: Intra-Species Diversity Based on Gene-Content Bacterial genome evolution is shaped to a great extent by horizontal gene transfer, detectable as genes with a presence-absence pattern of variation that does not follow phylogenetic relationships acr...

How diverse are the individual strains within your species?
How broad is their Pangenome?
How will you choose representatives from the whole collection?

Look no further! PanGene-O-Meter is here for you!
From @haimashkenazy.bsky.social @plantevolution.bsky.social

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

👉 my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
Join us and be part of shaping the future of #plantscience at Oxford as we move to the new Life and Mind Building lifeandmind.web.ox.ac.uk/home (recognised for its potential to change the World edition.cnn.com/2025/01/01/s...) @biology.ox.ac.uk www.biology.ox.ac.uk

Quantification and Determination of Compatible Bacterial Consortia This study presents a mathematical model to identify compatible bacterial consortia by analysing antagonistic and coexistence relationships. Introducing the Bacterial Coexistence Index (BCI), it eval....

Quantification and Determination of Compatible Bacterial Consortia

in #MicrobialBiotech

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Harnessing soil microbes to weather rock and fight climate change Discover how Bacillus subtilis strain MP1 accelerates silicate weathering in agricultural soils, locking away 7.3 tonnes of CO2 per hectare annually through standard agricultural practices.

The latest feature in #TheMicrobiologist explores research that is using bacteria to lock away carbon in soil. www.the-microbiologist.com/features/har...

Ambizione: a boost for research careers In 2025, the SNSF will be funding 92 projects by early-career researchers with an average of 830,000 francs each.

✨ #Ambizione: The SNSF is awarding 76.4 million Swiss francs to 92 early-career researchers. They will receive an average of 830,000 francs to lead their first independent research project at a higher education institution in Switzerland. 🚀

ℹ️https://buff.ly/WGvNr7E