Erh-Min Lai-IPMB

(🧵 8/8) By integrating floral-stage selection, immune evasion, and Agrobacterium engineering, the team established a practical platform to boost plant genetic engineering efficiency in Arabidopsis.

(🧵 6/8) The team achieved several milestone discoveries for improving Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression, stable transformation, and genome-editing efficiencies in plants.

(🧵 5/8) ... work to advance solutions to overcoming barriers in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (AMT) through an Institutional Grand Challenge Project.

🌱 The authors behind the paper 🌱

(🧵 4/8) A research team at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, led by Project Director Erh-Min Lai, with co-PIs Chih-Horng Kuo and Chih-Hang Wu...

Fig. 3 Agrobacterium infection and EF-Tu receptor (EFR)-mediated immunity exert negative impacts on ovule development.

(🧵 3/8) These improvements significantly enhanced transient gene expression and CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing, enabling efficient recovery of edited plants without selection. This work offers a practical, high-efficiency platform to advance plant genome engineering.

Fig. 2 RUBY marker revealed transformation events in floral organs and female tissues.

(🧵 2/8) In this Methods paper Liu et al. explain how they developed an optimized Agrobacterium-mediated floral transformation in Arabidopsis thaliana by identifying the most receptive floral stage and engineering agrobacterial strains to evade plant immunity.

(🧵 7/8) This study was primarily conducted by co-first authors Mao-Sen Liu (Project Research Scientist) and Teng-Kuei Huang (Postdoctoral Fellow), with support from Technicians Yi-Chieh Wang and Si-Chong Wang.

Fig. 1 Agrobacterium enter open gynoecium within 1 h but transformation events occur in open flowers after 5 d post inoculation (DPI).

✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/8) Floral Stage Optimization and Immune Evasion Enhance Agrobacterium-Mediated Genome Editing in Arabidopsis
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Now we have Chih-hang Wu @IPMBSinica Taiwan 🇹🇼 at #PPATH2025 — Fast and Furious: What happens after helper NLR immune receptors are activated to cause hypersensitive cell death.

See paper doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Connections are in action in Cologne! At #2025ISMPMI, the poster sessions aren’t just about groundbreaking research—they’re about meeting peers, collaboration, and sharing ideas that move plant-microbe science forward.

Full poster hours here: bit.ly/44LqCvc

#plantscience #networking

It was an amazing sciences day at #2025ISMPMI!
Right after the “Population, biology, ecology and genomics” session, I had the opportunity to have lunch and discuss about this topic with the co-chair @honour.bsky.social

Great pleasure hosting @fuquaclay.bsky.social visiting IPMB, Academia Sinica. Enjoy scientific discussion, casual chatting over delicious meals and outing. #Agrobacterium #Taiwan

Check out the ASM 10th Conference on Biofilms Bluesky page @asmbiofilms2025.bsky.social

Linear dicentric chromosomes in bacterial natural isolates reveal common constraints for replicon fusion | mBio Most bacterial genomes are monopartite with a single, circular chromosome. However, some species, like Agrobacterium tumefaciens, carry multiple chromosomes. Emergence of multipartite genomes is often...

Happy to share a new publication on a collaboration with Xindan Wang and @fuquaclay.bsky.social labs. We identified and characterized naturally occurring Agrobacterium strains with fused chromosomes. Did mobile genetic elements play a role in fusion? journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Quantitative dissection of Agrobacterium T-DNA expression in single plant cells reveals density-dependent synergy and antagonism - Nature Plants Alamos et al. show that Agrobacterium engages in density-dependent interactions that dictate transformation efficiency and transgene expression. These findings enable a quantitative model to improve m...

Interesting MS on Agrobacterium cooperation and antagonism as well as development of dual binary system that mitigates plant immune antagonism. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to write this News & Views highlighting a groundbreaking study on #Agrobacterium. By combining mathematical modelling with quantitative live-cell imaging, the study uncovered a density-dependent synergistic and antagonistic effect on #AMT

A plant dual-kinase protein traps a pathogen effector to trigger immunity - Nature Genetics Tandem kinase proteins (TKPs) are key regulators of plant immunity. We found that RWT4, a wheat TKP, confers resistance to the fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae by directly recognizing the effector A...

Our Research Briefing on the tandem kinase proteins paper is online now!
Curious about the story behind our TKP paper?
📄 Research Briefing: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
📄 Research article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Floral Stage Optimization and Immune Evasion Enhance Agrobacterium-Mediated Genome Editing in Arabidopsis Agrobacterium-mediated transformation via floral inoculation (AMT-FI) enables genetic engineering without tissue culture. It is widely used in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, yet its efficiency ...

👀 EFR-mediated PTI restricts transient transformation and genome editing, but not T-DNA integration.
This study combines floral stage targeting 🌷, immune evasion 🛡️, and Agrobacterium engineering 🔧 to boost plant genome editing efficiency.
#Agrobacterium
#GenomeEditing
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Floral Stage Optimization and Immune Evasion Enhance Agrobacterium-Mediated Genome Editing in Arabidopsis Agrobacterium-mediated transformation via floral inoculation (AMT-FI) enables genetic engineering without tissue culture. It is widely used in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, yet its efficiency ...

Nice preprint from Erh-Min Lai's lab. "By integrating floral stage selection, immune evasion, and Agrobacterium engineering, this study provides a practical and versatile platform to advance plant genome engineering." vhttps://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.07.652770v1

Tweeps, please spread the word. We're still looking at recruiting a structural biologist (any level) to study plant-pathogen protein complexes especially in the context of coevolution. Direct inquiries welcome.

Please include a cover letter.

Applicant from US welcome? medium.com/@kamounlab/2...