News

🎉 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!

Natalia’s paper with Takato Imaizumi is out in Plant, Cell & Environment here! In cowpea, responses to the caterpillar peptide In11 are gated by time of day: daytime elicitation produces stronger late-induced gene expression than nighttime, and this gating is lost in plants with arrhythmic expression of the clock genes VuLHY1 and VuLHY2. Congrats Natalia!

After more than five years in the lab, Natalia Guayazán-Palacios leaves to start a postdoc with Lena Mueller at the Salk Institute. Natalia was the lab’s first graduate student. We will miss you Natalia, and good luck!

Woody, Ben, and Adam wrote a preview, “An allele of a hexameric enzyme is poised for an autoimmune dangerous mix”, now out in Molecular Cell here.

After graduating with a B.S. in Biology, Euan McCubbin moves from undergraduate researcher to Research Technician. Euan is engineering a system to screen DAMP candidates in vivo. Congrats on graduating, Euan!

Undergraduate researcher Euan McCubbin was awarded a Mary Gates Undergraduate Research Scholarship. Congrats Euan!

Natalia and Adam wrote a preview on plant cell surface receptors at the forefront of the growth-defense trade-off, now out in Developmental Cell here.

Amy Moore joins the lab as a UW Biology graduate student! Amy previously studied the plant immune signaling network in Fumi Katagiri’s lab at the University of Minnesota, and DNA replication timing in yeast as a post-bac in the Brewer/Raghuraman lab at UW. Welcome Amy!

Kelsey Wood joins the lab coming from PhD and postdoc experience at UC Davis. Welcome Kelsey!

We welcome Jaden Benitez to the lab for the summer. Jaden will participate in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Summer Scientist program. Welcome!

Di “Woody” Wu joins the lab, coming from PhD and postdoc experiences at University of British Columbia. Welcome!

Wesley leaves after a productive year as a technician. He will attend UC Riverside’s Plant Biology grad program. Congrats Wes!

🎉 The lab has received a 5 year award to study immunodiversity of plant immune receptors. More information can be found here.

We are pairing with Dr. Dinesh Kumar to host a UC Davis undergraduate. The student will return to UC Davis to work with Dinesh during the academic year. Please see details here

Simon and Anthony’s paper on evolution of the INR receptor is now out in eLIFE here! See Adam’s tweet here. Congrats!

William Albers and Anthony Garcia will rotate in the lab for the fall quarter. Welcome!

Lab alum Ava was featured on the UW homepage!

Adam will present at the 12th Japan-US Seminar in Plant Pathology on “Evolution and Function of plant receptor-like proteins (RLPs)”

Recently graduated senior Ava Kloss-Schmidt leaves the lab after 2.5 great years developing bean genetic resources and optimizing herbivory assays. Good luck at Carnegie Ava!

We will be making the short trip to PB22 in Portland, OR. 4 lab members will present posters, and Natalia will give a talk on plant-herbivore interactions! Link to titles

Tonio has left to prepare to start at UC Berkeley PMB’s PhD program in August. He is our first full-time departure since we started the lab in 2019. Good luck Tonio!

1st year graduate student Ben S has joined the lab. Welcome Ben!

Adam presented our lab’s recent preprint at the PGO meeting. You can view a talk recording here: Youtube link

Awesome news: the lab’s first two members, Anthony Garcia and Tonio Chaparro, were awarded the NSF-GRFP! Tonio joined as a technician and Anthony as an undergraduate researcher (now technician). Congrats!

New work is available in BioRxiv: Evolutionary gain and loss of a plant pattern-recognition receptor for HAMP recognition (link). Congrats Simon and Anthony! Adam’s twitter summary is here

A new publication describing the combined effects of wounding and HAMP treatment is available in The Plant Journal (link). Work was completed at UW with help of Tonio and Natalia!

Simon, Natalia, and Adam have a new long-form review in press at The Plant Cell. Adam’s twitter summary is here. Congrats!

Our lab will host two first year students for the Fall quarter, Janet and Ben. Welcome both!!

The lab will be well represented at this year’s ASPB Plant Bio meeting. Our posters and talks are listed below!

Anthony recently graduated from UW and will stay on as a Research Technician in the lab. Congrats Anthony!

Happy new year from the lab!

Our receptor story, previously in bioRxiv, is finally published in PNAS!
“A receptor-like protein mediates plant immune responses to herbivore-associated molecular patterns”

Natalia Guayazán-Palacios, rising 2nd year Biology grad, has joined the lab. Welcome Natalia!

Adam’s new review on the evolution of cell surface immune networks is online at Current Opinion in Plant Biology and can be found here. We would love to discuss!

Prof. Steinbrenner will attend the 10th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Association of Chemical Ecologists in Hangzhou, China. He will present in Session 3: “Signaling and Perception in Plant-Herbivore Interactions.” Say hello if you are also attending, and come to hear about INR and our future plans to understand evolution of immune recognition across bean populations.

The lab’s first official member has joined! Antonio will join as a technician. Heis a recent graduate of the UW and comes in with experience in plant molecular genetics from his undergraduate research. Welcome Antonio!

We will present our INR preprint and other transcriptomic and genomic follow-ups at MPMI in Glasgow and ASPB in San Jose Aug 3-7 https://aspb.org/event/plant-biology-2019/

The core of Adam’s postdoctoral work is now posted on bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/679803v1) in a manuscript entitled “A Receptor for Herbivore-Associated Molecular Patterns Mediates Plant Immunity.” We are excited to connect surface immune recognition to chewing herbivory through INR. We’re very happy it’s available on bioRxiv as it works its way through journal submission. Comments are welcome, please email or Twitter DM @ADSteinbrenner.

We are hiring a research technologist to take on a variety of research and management roles as the lab gets going. Please see UW Hires for the official job ad and here for the flyer (including how to apply)

The lab website is up and running! Check back for updates