Welcome to the lab website of Professor Daniel Gibbs @ University of Birmingham

Land plants include angiosperms, gymnosperms, bryophytes, lycophytes, and ferns, each of which may deploy distinct strategies to resist pathogens. Here, we investigate fern-pathogen interactions by characterizing novel pathosystems and analyzing the diversity of fern immune receptors. A collection of fern species was inoculated with a diverse set of filamentous microbes, and disease symptoms were assessed. We further leveraged published genome mining tools to analyse the diversity of receptor-like kinases, receptor-like proteins (RLKs/RLPs) and nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeats (NLRs), along with key immune signalling components, in ferns. Our results reveal that ferns exhibit a range of responses to pathogens, including putative non-host resistance and more specific resistance mechanisms. Among ten ferns tested, Pteris vittata displays the broadest spectrum of pathogen compatibility. Genome mining indicates that ferns encode a diverse repertoire of putative immune receptors, antimicrobial peptides, and mediators of systemic acquired resistance. Ferns possess numerous RLKs/RLPs, resembling those required for cell-surface immunity in angiosperms. They also encode diverse NLRs, including sub-families lost in flowering plants. These findings provide insights into disease resistance evolution and open promising perspectives for crop protection strategies.

Join us in exploring the hidden functions of ancient immune proteins in bacteria. Bacteria, like plants and animals, have evolved sophisticated systems to detect and respond to threats.

Plant cells are connected to their neighbours via ‘tubes’ called plasmodesmata, creating an interconnected cytoplasm that joins cells within and between tissues and organs.

What makes a plant killer lose its edge? This project will investigate why fungal pathogens lose virulence when they are grown in laboratory culture away from their host plant. Use cutting-edge…

The fossil record demonstrates that filamentous microbes invaded ancient plant cells with intracellular hyphal structures over 450 million years ago. To this day, a rich diversity of extant land plant...

Plants secrete a variety of proteases as a defense response during infection by microbial pathogens. However, the relationship between their catalytic activities and antimicrobial functions remains la...

Viruses maximize their limited coding space through strategies that increase transcript and protein diversity. In mammalian viruses, splicing is a well-established mechanism for proteome expansion, ye...

PhD Project - The biosynthesis and immunity function of lettuce sesquiterpene lactones at Gatsby Charitable Foundation, listed on FindAPhD.com

Plant immunity mediated by a major class of immune receptors is conserved among flowering and nonflowering plants, and these receptors have domains with si

This study reveals genetic factors underlying the salicylic acid (SA)-mediated growth-immunity tradeoff in plants by identifying suppressor mutants with restored growth in the background of the highl...