Plant Immunogenomics

Plant Immunity meets Evolutionary Genomics

We are searching for new immunity genes in plant genomes.

Immunity – highly innovative, highly conserved

The evolution of immunity and acute stress-tolerance is unique in its rapid pace and innovative nature. As organisms co-evolve with pathogens and parasites, both sides constantly have to change and adapt to outsmart the other. This leads to fantastic innovation of molecular immune systems across the tree of life. At the same time, the race between parasites and hosts is as ancient as life itself; It was only recently appreciated that many of the immune mechanisms we observe in animals and plants today have their roots in our original common ancestors – prokaryotic cells that were defending themselves against viruses since the dawn of cellular life on Earth.

In our group, we aim to learn from discoveries across the tree of life to decipher the complex ways by which plants adapt to pathogen and environmental stresses. Our research focus on both extreme ends of evolutionary dynamics to discover new genes involved in adaptation and immunity.

Diversification of immunity

We use genomic signatures of diversity to identify hypervariable regions in plant genomes, and study the genes within them.

We use genomic signatures of diversity to identify hypervariable regions in plant genomes, and study the genes within them.

Rapidly changing selection pressure shape rapidly evolving genomic loci. These genomic regions are characterized by novel genes, rampant gene duplication and translocation, and hotspots of mobile genetic elements' activity. This makes them the hardest regions to study in complex plant genomes. Recent technological developments finally allow us to clearly see and compare these islands of diversity in large collection of plants from the same species. We are utilizing these new resources to discover new gene families that exhibit high diversity and rapid evolution to identify new candidate genes that could be involved in immunity and adaptation to stress.

Conservation of immunity

We identify distant homologs of conserved immune systems from animals and bacteria in plant genomes, and test if they have new immune functions in plants.

We identify distant homologs of conserved immune systems from animals and bacteria in plant genomes, and test if they have new immune functions in plants.

Remarkable conservation of immune modules can be observed across immune systems of animals, bacteria and plants. Immunity shares a common language of protein domains, a language we are finally getting to know. We use this conservation and reuse of immune proteins domains to identify plant homologues of bacterial and animal immune systems, using the vast knowledge of immunity in other organism to better understand plant immunity.