Subtilase SBT5.2 inactivates flagellin immunogenicity in the plant apoplast.

Most angiosperm plants recognise the 22-residue flagellin (flg22) epitope in bacterial flagellin via homologs of cell surface receptor FLS2 (flagellin sensitive-2) and mount pattern-triggered immune responses. However, flg22 is buried within the flagellin protein indicating that proteases might be required for flg22 release. Here, we demonstrate the extracellular subtilase SBT5.

A Robotic Clamped-Kinematic System to Study Knee Ligament Injury.

Knee ligament injury is among the most common sports injuries and is associated with long recovery periods and low return-to-sport rates. Unfortunately, the mechanics of ligament injury are difficult to study in vivo, and computational studies provide limited insight. The objective of this study was to implement and validate a robotic system capable of reproducing natural six degree-of-freedom clamped-kinematic trajectories on human cadaver knees (meaning that positions and orientations are rigidly controlled and resultant loads are measured).

Novel structural insights at the extracellular plant-pathogen interface.

Plant pathogens represent a critical threat to global agriculture and food security, particularly under the pressures of climate change and reduced agrochemical use. Most plant pathogens initially colonize the extracellular space or apoplast and understanding the host-pathogen interactions that occur here is vital for engineering sustainable disease resistance in crops. Structural biology has played important roles in elucidating molecular mechanisms underpinning plant-pathogen interactions but only few studies have reported structures of extracellular complexes.

Hypoxia represses pattern-triggered immune responses in Arabidopsis.

Biotic and abiotic stresses frequently co-occur in nature, yet relatively little is known about how plants coordinate the response to combined stresses. Protein degradation by the ubiquitin/proteasome system is central to the regulation of multiple independent stress response pathways in plants. The Arg/N-degron pathway is a subset of the ubiquitin/proteasome system that targets proteins based on their N-termini and has been specifically implicated in the responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, including hypoxia, via accumulation of group VII ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR (ERF-VII) transcription factors that orchestrate the onset of the hypoxia response program.