A. R. Bentham

Bioengineering a plant NLR immune receptor with a robust binding interface towards a conserved fungal pathogen effector

The paper bioengineers a plant NLR receptor to recognize a conserved fungal effector, resulting in durable resistance against blast fungus isolates.

The WY domain of an RxLR effector drives interactions with a host target phosphatase to mimic host regulatory proteins and promote Phytophthora infestans infection.

This study characterizes the interaction between the WY domain of the P. infestans effector Pi04314 and the host PP1c phosphatase, showing how it mimics host regulatory proteins to promote infection.

Allelic compatibility in plant immune receptors facilitates engineering of new effector recognition specificities.

This paper demonstrates how allelic compatibility in the Pik NLR pair can be exploited to engineer NLRs with expanded effector recognition specificities without causing constitutive cell death.

Binding of a blast fungus Zinc-finger fold effector to a hydrophobic pocket in the host exocyst subunit Exo70 modulates immune recognition in rice

This paper reveals how the blast fungus effector AVR-Pii binds to rice Exo70, modulating immune recognition through a novel Zinc-finger fold and conserved hydrophobic interface.

pOPIN-GG: A resource for modular assembly in protein expression vectors

The paper introduces pOPIN-GG vectors enabling modular cloning for rapid protein expression with various tags, maintaining expression levels and supporting complex purification.

Perception of structurally distinct effectors by the integrated WRKY domain of a plant immune receptor.

This paper reveals how the WRKY domain of the Arabidopsis NLR receptor RRS1 recognizes structurally distinct bacterial effectors to initiate immunity.

A single amino acid polymorphism in a conserved effector of the multihost blast fungus pathogen expands host-target binding spectrum

The paper identifies a single amino acid change in APikL2 that expands its host-target binding spectrum through altered hydrogen-bonding networks.