Our collaborative paper with Bryan Swingle has been published at Frontiers in Microbiology! In collaboration with Bryan's lab at Cornell and Adam Deutschbauer's lab at LBNL, we identified new genes important for motility in Pseudomonas syringae using a random barcoded transposon library that our lab developed. Bacterial motility is important for virulence of plant pathogenic bacteria.

Our collaborative paper with Yasu Kadota and Ken Shirasu is now published at The Plant Cell! Using our high-throughput next-generation based yeast two-hybrid screen (QIS-Seq), we found that the Pseudomonas syringae effector HopF2 interacts with a pattern-recognition receptor QSK1. QSK1 is a negative regulator of basal defenses. By targeting QSK1, HopF2 promotes bacterial virulence.

Jana's first-author paper is published in Frontiers in Plant Science! Using a seedling-based screen that our lab developed, we identified complex resistance to Pseudomonas syringae in wild tomato. Previous graduate students Nate Diplock and Ilea Chau-ly, as well as previous undergrads Jamie, Liz, Steven and Taylor also contributed to the project. This project will help identify new sources of disease resistance in wild relatives of crop species.

Nate's first-author paper is published in Plant Physiology! Nate identified mutants in ZED1 that were able to recognize Pseudomonas syringae effector HopZ1a without triggering autoimmune responses. He showed that one ZED1 mutant could be coupled with tomato ZAR1 to enable effector recognition. Since ZAR1 is highly conserved in plants, this suggests effector recognition could be broadened to non-model species. Former postdoc Dr. Mael Baudin and former undergrad Derek Xiang also contributed to this project, along with our collaborators Dr. James Murphy, Dr. Isabelle Lucet and their lab members at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia.