🎉 Natalia’s paper is out in Science Advances here! Using lab and field experiments in Mexico, the team showed that the inceptin receptor (INR) in common bean does more than amplify the wound response: recognition of inceptin activates an herbivore-specific pathway that releases a distinctive volatile blend, recruiting predatory wasps that remove caterpillars from the plants. Thanks to collaborators Patrick Grof-Tisza, Carla Arce, Eric Schmelz, Ted Turlings, and Betty Benrey. Congrats Natalia, Brian, Woody, Tonio, and Ben!

Ben, Brian, and Adam posted BAT, an integrated pipeline for gene tree construction, annotation, and functional inference, on bioRxiv here. Congrats Ben!

Ekkachai Khwanbua joins the lab as a postdoc, coming from his PhD in Plant Pathology at Iowa State University. Ekkachai is excited to learn more about plant receptor biology, including receptor-like proteins (RLPs). Welcome Ekkachai!

Brian’s paper on natural variation in INR is out in PLOS ONE here! Some common bean landraces are insensitive to the caterpillar peptide In11. Brian, Wes, Tonio, and Ava found that this variation tracks with the expression level of INR, linked to promoter variation, rather than with changes in the receptor’s coding sequence. Congrats Brian and team!