We bid farewell to Bushra who will move the Spoel Lab @SpoelLab in Edinburgh, but will stick to ubiquitination.

We wish you the best of luck!

The Pleiades are a cluster of fungal effectors that inhibit host defenses

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009641

Biotrophic plant pathogens secrete effector proteins to manipulate the host physiology. Effectors suppress defenses and induce an environment favorable to disease development. In this paper we describe the functional characterization of the pleiades, a cluster of ten effector genes. Merope1, which is encoded in the Pleiades cluster, targets and promotes the auto-ubiquitination activity of RFI2, a conserved family of E3 ligases that regulates the production of PAMP-triggered ROS burst in plants.

Ubiquitin signalling: controlling the message of surface immune receptors

Microbial attack is first detected by immune receptors located at the plasma membrane. Their activation triggers a plethora of signalling cascades that culminate in the immune response. Ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like protein modifiers play key roles in controlling signalling amplitude and intensity, as well as in buffering proteome imbalances caused by pathogen attack. Here I highlight some of the important advances in the field, which are starting to reveal an intertwined and complex signalling circuitry, which regulates cellular dynamics and protein degradation to maintain homeostasis.

We wellcome Kai Clemens to our team! After working with moss, he will now try to develop crop plants with enhanced resistance to pathogens using components of the ubiquitin modification system.

We are very excited to see this article now published in PNAS. Happy to have been able to contribute! Great cooperation with Jacqui Monaghan’s Lab (Queen’s University, Canada). Check it out!

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/19/e2024272118

Alaa joined us all the way from Palestine by way of Fukuoka (Japan). He invited us all to some delicious “Ramen” and “Udon” noodles. Carmen carefully inspected them carefully beforehand.

Thank you Alaa, it was oishi!

Check out this excellent cooperation paper with Ingo Heilmann from the University of Halle and Sabine Rosahl from the IPB “A phosphoinositide 5-phosphatase from Solanum tuberosum is activated by PAMP-treatment and may antagonize phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate at Phytophthora infestans infection sites”

New Phytologist https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nph.16853

Check out our report for the Freiburg Conference on Plant Proteostasis:

“Plant proteostasis – shaping the proteome: a research community aiming to understand molecular mechanisms that control protein abundance” https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.16664

This was an outstanding oportunity to connect with the community! The next chance will be during the Gordon Research Conference “Plant Proteolysis” in Rhode Island (U.S.A.) https://www.grc.org/plant-proteolysis-conference/2021/

Somewhat overdue, but a big congrats to Moritz for his successful Master Defence! We celebrated with some delicious apple pie and ice cream. No worries Moritz, we’ll keep on looking for AIMs 😉