Entries by Saima Shahid

Tapping into the genetic diversity of wild crops for engineering disease resistance (Nature Biotech)

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Lack of sequence information makes harnessing the diversity of disease resistance (R) genes in wild crops highly challenging. Arora and Steuernagel et al. report AgRenSeq, a reference genome-free technique, for rapid cloning of nucleotide binding/Leucine-rich repeat (NLR) resistance genes from wild crops. Using R gene enrichment sequencing, the authors captured thousands of NLR-specific contigs from 151 […]

Plant-pathogen arms race: A pathogen effector protein inhibits trans-kingdom RNAi (Cell Host & Microbe)

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Phytophthora spp. are highly aggressive fungus-like pathogens that cause various blight and rot diseases in many crops. Upon invasion of host cells, Phytophthora delivers thousands of effector proteins. Some of these effectors suppress the host RNA silencing pathway, which is mediated by a diverse group of small RNAs including microRNAs (miRNAs), and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Hou et […]