Another day another beautiful inflammasome structure! "Structure of zebrafish NLRP3 reveals a novel mode of inflammasome activation" by Dopslaff et al.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Beautiful work by @franbottanelli.bsky.social lead by @probablycarmen.bsky.social now out. Was fun to contribute!

Congratulations! Lots of cool biology to be discovered in fungal GPCRs!

We just received funding for a 2yr postdoc position on cryoEM of fungal gpcrs. Official call will open soon.

Contact me if you‘re interested!

Humbling to give a cell biology talk in the centre in Szeged where Brúnó Straub first isolated and named actin. He was working in Albert Szent‑Györgyi’s muscle biochemistry group, which had just won the 1937 Nobel Prize for isolation of Vitamin C. Both commemorated here.

Great visit to the Biological Research Centre of Szeged in (a very happy) Hungary - excellent discussions on fungal developmental biology with László Nagy and team.

impressive!

IS-MPMI

#IS-MPMI Interested in how discoveries in the plant-microbe field have been translated to the real world? Check out our YouTube channel. We’ve just posted the ISMPMI Translational Science Workshop from 2021. Available to the public for the first time.

www.youtube.com/@is-mpmi3587

BREAKING: A Closer Look at the King of Planets. 🪐🛰️

NASA has just released a new perspective of Jupiter so sharp it’s almost impossible to comprehend. Those intricate, marble-like swirls aren't just clouds—they are colossal storms, many of which could swallow Earth whole. 🌍🌪️

~12 years after we coined it EPP1 with @oswaldovaldesl.bsky.social one afternoon when we were postdoc with @jeanmichelane.bsky.social!

Congrats @melaniekrich.bsky.social @tatiana-vernie.bsky.social et al. for the hard work!

EPP1 is the fourth member of the Common Symbiosis Pathway 🍄🌱!

Check out this exciting postdoc opportunity at @johninnescentre.bsky.social to work with the amazing @hassansalem.bsky.social and @berasymbionts.bsky.social on the developmental and molecular basis of insect–microbe symbiosis.

I’m excited to be part of this collaborative project!

Host-adapted enzymatic deconstruction of acetylated xylan limits immune activation and facilitates mutualistic colonization of monocot roots This study identifies a monocot-specific enzymatic module in the beneficial root endophyte Serendipita indica, showing how ancestral saprotrophic enzymes have been repurposed into an immune-compatible...

Very proud to share our new paper led by Mathias Brands from my team at @UniCologne! With Markus Pauly team @HHU. Host-adapted enzymatic deconstruction of acetylated xylan limits immune activation and facilitates mutualistic colonization of monocot roots: Molecular Plant www.cell.com/molecular-pl...

I’ve read all the biographies & Crick’s autobiography too, but I feel like I got to know the real person in this book. A masterpiece, because of the brilliant writing and research of @matthewcobb.bsky.social

Flying over Norwich Research Park this morning. The start of the HP3 project providing new infrastructure to @johninnescentre.bsky.social and @thesainsburylab.bsky.social is visible now as well as the new data centre by @earlhaminst.bsky.social

The Fossilised Keyboard at the top of Elm Hill- time-travel in Norwich???

Beautiful towering Patagonian Oak in churchyard of St. Michael at Plea in Norwich next to a sweet gum tree from North America as highlighted in Paul Wood’s book of great trees of UK.

So richly deserved!!! Congratulations @mpcontreras.bsky.social !!!

@thesainsburylab.bsky.social is on a roll! Awards from 2025, 2026 and 2027 went to current or former TSL members! @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social, myself and @mpcontreras.bsky.social
And also @plantophagy.bsky.social in 2018 🤯

TSL Alumnus wins Biochemical Society Award Mauricio Contreras has been recognised as an exceptional Early Career Researcher by the Biochemical Society. Currently based at the University of Tübingen, Germany, Mauricio previously spent several…

We are happy to celebrate @mpcontreras.bsky.social winning the @biochemsoc.bsky.social 2027 Early Career Research Award!

Mauricio joined TSL as a predoc with @kamounlab.bsky.social, where he did PhD and postdoc before starting his group at @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social

Congrats Mau!

Congratulations @mpcontreras.bsky.social for this well-deserved recognition! Great to see!

Back in Pacific NW🗻

Winter oil seed rape in full flower now - the companion crop experiment looks to have been successful. #Norfolk

Puffins on the Farne Islands.

Preprint alert 🚨 (1/10) 🧵

𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘹 𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺:
It can promote resistance, susceptibility, or restrict cell death 🤯

So what is its actual role?

We show it acts as a spatial organizer of immunity across cell types 🌱🦠 #proteostasis

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

Septins don’t just form structures - they reorganise over time.

Their interaction networks are dynamically rewired across infection stages, linking septins to diverse cellular processes not previously connected to septin function.

To address this, we built a time-resolved septin interactome across infection-related development using Co-IP/MS and Y2H.

→ >350 high-confidence interactors
→ strong stage-specific rewiring

Septins are classically seen as cytoskeletal scaffolds controlling polarity and morphogenesis.

But how they connect to broader cellular processes during infection, particularly at a systems level, has remained unclear.

bioRxiv: A stage-resolved map of dynamic septin interactions required for infection by the rice blast fungus (2026) Septin GTPases are essential cytoskeletal regulators that organize membranes and scaffold protein complexes to control cytokinesis, polarity, and morphogenesis. How septins execute these functions remains poorly understood, and comprehensive, stage-resolved interaction maps are lacking. Here, we define a quantitative, time-resolved septin interactome in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae using immunoprecipitation coupled to mass spectrometry. We map more than 350 interactors of septins Sep3, Sep4, Sep5 and Sep6, revealing a dynamic network required for appressorium-mediated plant infection. Beyond canonical roles in cytoskeletal organisation and polarity, septins associate with proteins linked to membrane remodelling, metabolism, and virulence, deployed during host invasion. Integration with ultra-high-throughput yeast two-hybrid analysis defines a high-confidence septin interactome and identifies previously uncharacterised factors, including Msi1, a BAR domain protein required for invasive growth. Together, these findings establish septins as dynamic organisers of infection-related processes and provide a framework for understanding how cytoskeletal scaffolds coordinate fungal pathogenesis.

New Preprint: A stage-resolved map of dynamic septin interactions required for infection by the rice blast fungus (2026)

https://www.tsl.ac.uk/publications/166266

Really grateful to all co-authors who made this possible 🙏
Neha Sahu @mariselagarduno.bsky.social Paul Derbyshire @frankmenke.bsky.social Weibin Ma @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social

Happy to hear any thoughts or feedback! 🌱🍄

This rewiring is functionally important.

We identify septin-associated proteins linked to virulence, including Msi1 - a BAR-domain protein that localises at the appressorium base and is required for efficient infection.