Research Highlights

Structural insights illuminate the arms race between crop plants and fungal pathogens<br /> 
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research shed light on how harmful fungi evade recognition by their plant hosts and aid infection.
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Jane Parker honored as Fellow of the Royal Society<br /> 
A huge congratulations to Jane Parker who is among the new Fellows elected to join the UK’s Royal Society for outstanding contributions in the field of sciences. [more]
Ryohei Thomas Nakano takes up Professorship at Hokkaido University, Japan
Ryohei Thomas Nakano, previously a postdoc with Paul Schulze-Lefert, is now continuing his research as a professor at Hokkaido University in Japan.

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Keeping competitors away drives colonization success in the plant microbiota
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, in Cologne, in collaboration with an international team of researchers, have identified natural chemical strategies that bacteria use to keep competitors at bay and successfully proliferate on plants. The study is now published in the journal PNAS.
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Structure of wheat immune protein resolved – important tool in the battle for food security
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research and the University of Cologne in Germany together with colleagues from China have unravelled how wheat protects itself from a deadly pathogen. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, could be harnessed to make important crop species more resistant to disease. [more]
Molecules boosting plant immunity identified<br /> 
Two studies published in the journal Science by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany in collaboration with colleagues in China have discovered natural cellular molecules that drive critical plant immune responses. These compounds have all the hallmarks of being small messengers tailored by plants to turn on key defense-control hubs. Harnessing these insights may allow scientists and plant breeders to design molecules that make plants, including many important crop species, more resistant to disease. [more]
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