Henry Janse van Rensburg

Check out our new preprint by @octaviarmn.bsky.social and @liobarueger.bsky.social in collaboration with @meikeburow.bsky.social - we investigate the spatial effect of glucosinolates on root microbiomes in Arabidopsis and Camelina! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... lots of cool stuff!

Our new preprint is out!

A fungal root endophyte functionally complements host immunity and mitigates natural immune variation in Arabidopsis Beneficial root-associated microbes can enhance plant resilience by complementing aspects of host immunity. The fungal root endophyte Serendipita indica (Si) is known to promote plant growth and confe...

A fungal root endophyte functionally complements host immunity and mitigates natural immune variation in Arabidopsis

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Benzoxazinoid-mediated microbiome feedbacks enhance Arabidopsis growth and defense Plants modulate their surrounding microbiome via root exudates and this conditioned soil microbiome feeds back on the performance of the next generation of plants. How plants can perceive this altered...

updated preprint: Intriguingly, Arabidopsis responded with both, improved growth and enhanced defence to a maize-conditioned soil microbiome, and this dual microbiome feedbacks were mediated by priming of the defences. Credits to Katja Stengele et al.!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Rhizosphere 6 - Rooting for Earth - Scientific Programme A fully interactive version of the conference programme is now available. Please use this to browse sessions and read abstracts in advance as well as to see where different sessions will be located an...

Happy to share that #Root2Res and #BarleyMicroBreed will jointly host the “Manipulating the rhizosphere with crop genetics” session at #Rhizosphere6. Root2Res and BarleyMucroBreed talks by Mette Vestergård (keynote), Menghui Dong, Lionel Dupuy and Tim George🌾🌞. www.rhizo6.org/scientific-p...

Undermining the cry for help: The phytopathogenic fungus Verticillium dahliae secretes an antimicrobial effector protein to undermine host recruitment of antagonistic Pseudomonas bacteria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.09.658588v1

Imaging of specialized plant cell walls by improved cryo-CLEM and cryo-electron tomography Cryo-focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (cryo-FIBSEM) has become essential for preparing electron-transparent lamellae from cryo-plunged and high-pressure frozen specimens. However, targeti...

Check out our latest work, featuring beautiful, first-of-their-kind cryo-tomograms of crucial plant cell wall modifications, Casparian strips, suberin lamellae, lignified xylem walls and more! From our Electron Microscopy Facility led by @chgenoud.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Cooperation between a root fungal endophyte and host-derived coumarin scopoletin mediates Arabidopsis iron nutrition Iron acquisition is a critical challenge for plants, especially in iron-deficient soils. Recent research underscores the importance of root-exuded coumarins in modulating the root microbiome community...

Curious about my PhD research @parkergroup.bsky.social? The paper is available as preprint on bioRxiv now!
🔬 The interaction between scopoletin and fungal endophyte F80 rescues plant growth under iron-limiting conditions by resolving the iron mobility bottleneck.
📝 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Can't say for sure, but our transcriptome suggests that it activates plant immunity on the microbiome where mutants assemble a root community that differs from that of WT. Most likely maintaining microbiome homeostasis in accessions carrying the SNP...

Excited to share my postdoctoral work from Basel! We discovered a “microbiota receptor” in Arabidopsis that optimises plant immunity, the root microbiome composition, eventually leading to enhanced plant growth.

A nucleoside signal generated by a fungal endophyte regulates host cell death and promotes root colonization The intracellular colonization of plant roots by the beneficial fungal endophyte Serendipita indica follows a biphasic strategy, including a host cell…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events - Nature Soils from 30 grasslands across Europe were subjected to 4 contrasting extreme climatic events under drought, flood, freezing and heat conditions, with the results suggesting that soil microbiomes fro...

Science takes time - a lot of time. Time that is more and more difficult to make available because of increased workloads. Time that exceeds the temporary contracts of postdocs and PhDs.

I'll illustrate this using our paper published in Nature yesterday. 🧵 (1/x)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...