Gene editing of the E3 ligase PIRE1 fine-tunes reactive oxygen species production for enhanced bacterial disease resistance in tomato An E3 ligase helps control plant immune responses and regulates reactive oxygen species production, offering a strategy to boost disease resistance in leav

Excited this MS is out! Here, we genome edited Pire in tomato, a conserved E3 ligase controlling NADPH oxidase accumulation in Arabidopsis. Edited lines exhibited enhanced resistance to foliar bacterial pathogens, but not two root colonizing pathogens. #PlantImmunity
academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

New paper alert! A chromosome-scale genome of Meloidogyne hapla. A devastating plant pathogen. But this is not just another genome.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵
NO CANONICAL TELOMERES but a novel 16-mer repeat at chromosome ends. A new mechanism for chromosome-end maintenance?

A Chromosome-scale Reference Genome of Meloidogyne hapla reveals localized recombination hotspots enriched with Effector Proteins www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05....

Worms just keeping everything good a weird with holocentric chromosomes AND weird caps at the ends. Awesome to see such an example of the diversity of solutions to segregating and maintaining information in chromosomes!

-Effectors are often domain-less, and enriched in high-recombination regions → hinting at adaptive evolution
Note: I am wrongly labelled as first author. Its
@pallavishakya.bsky.social
's work. A new version with correct author arrangement has been submitted.

-Genome structure validated with F2 linkage mapping. A first in plant-parasitic nematodes
-Structural variation between isolates: fissions, fusions, rearrangements
-Sharp zones of high recombination on most chromosome arms

New paper alert! A chromosome-scale genome of Meloidogyne hapla. A devastating plant pathogen. But this is not just another genome.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
🧵
NO CANONICAL TELOMERES but a novel 16-mer repeat at chromosome ends. A new mechanism for chromosome-end maintenance?

Alison Blundell Named Recipient of Outstanding Student Award from Society of Nematologists UC Davis doctoral candidate Alison Blundell, shown here at the 2023 SON conference, is the recipient of the 2025 John M.

Congrats. Well deserved Alison

nematology.ucdavis.edu/news/alison-...

Beautiful work. Congrats @yichangsung.bsky.social all coauthors @gittacoaker.bsky.social

Diet-regulated transcriptional plasticity of plant parasites in plant–mutualist environments | PNAS Crop pathogens often lack exclusive access to their host and must interact with plants concurrently engaged with numerous other symbionts. Here, we...

Important work on nematode diet regularion.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Very excited to see my first first-authored paper published in @pnas.org . We found the first regulator of effector production in plant-parasitic nematodes! Congratulations to co first author @clempellegrin.bsky.social and all other authors. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🪱🔬 Nematode Nerds Unite! 🔬🪱
Huge thanks to the Groen lab for hosting us at UCR Nematology! From exciting research discussions to sharing our love for these tiny but mighty guys with many NEMA-enthusiastics from this department, it was a truly NEMA-zing experience!
🧬🔬
#WormScience #UCD #UCR

New to bluesky - would appreciate a "retweet" please, so I can find everyone from twitter.

UC (Davis+Riverside) Nematology Meet up! @chjlin.bsky.social @damarisgodinez.bsky.social @simoncgroen.bsky.social

Activation of a helper NLR by plant and bacterial TIR immune signaling Plant intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) receptors with an N-terminal Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain sense pathogen effectors to initiate immune signaling. TIR domain...

doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Great news. Many congrats Deepak.