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Dani Stevens, Ph.D.

@danimstevens

Plant Immunologist x Machine Learning, occasional biochemist | 🌱-🧫 interactions | UC Berkeley Postdoc | 2 x USDA NIFA Fellow

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21.09.2023
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Latest posts by Dani Stevens, Ph.D. @danimstevens

100% agree. Especially with how much money is spent a year toward pub fees (10-30K+) that could go to other career opportunities. Plus, I can get high quality reviews from peers without a formal journal system. Sadly as a postdoc, I feel like my hands are tied, but I would love to help the cause.

16.09.2025 06:35 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Many times, we come back to traditional journals in the end because like NIH grants, preprints don't hold the same weight/merit in trainee fellowships, tenure process, etc. It is still a challenge, though I'd like to think that if established groups move away from trad pubs, others will follow.

16.09.2025 06:14 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Chromosome-level genome assembly of Triticum turgidum var 'Kronos' This data is made available under the Toronto Agreement.Β All of the data listed here is available under the prepublication data sharing principle of the Toronto agreement (1). By using this data, you ...

Yes, @kseniakrasileva.bsky.social have moved to an increasingly open science model where we not only preprint early, sometimes far before journal submission, but even make datasets open before preprinting (wheat genome example: zenodo.org/records/1021...). We welcome feedback from our community.

16.09.2025 06:14 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Sweet! Those look beautiful. I wish sharing pymol/chimeraX scripts were as common as other computational work and languages.

18.08.2025 03:53 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This is quite interesting, especially since myself and others have found the opposite (ROS, no MAPK)! If I were to $$ on it, my guess is the binding interaction in-complex is causing different PTM modifications on the kinase domain, leading to a bimodal signaling cascade. πŸ€” Can't wait to read more!

26.07.2025 03:39 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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GitHub - DanielleMStevens/mamp-ml: mamp-ml: Prediction of immunogenic outcomes of LRR-PRRs and protein ligands in plants using pLM ESM-2 mamp-ml: Prediction of immunogenic outcomes of LRR-PRRs and protein ligands in plants using pLM ESM-2 - DanielleMStevens/mamp-ml

While there's lots of work to be done, mamp-ml is a critical advancement in plant immunology for accelerating receptor-epitope characterization and engineering resistance. Mamp-ml is on Github and we implemented a version on Google Colab for easy use. Please check it out!
github.com/DanielleMSte...

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
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Finally, we also tested its ability to predict outcomes for convergently evolved receptors. SCORE, a csp22 receptor found in Citrus and relatives, was recently discovered by @brunongou.bsky.social. We preliminarily found mamp-ml can zero-shot predict immunogenic outcomes!

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Compared to other state-of-the-art models such as AlphaFold3, mamp-ml can predict these outcomes with higher confidence, even when a solved structure is not available. We anticipate users can now screen for immunogenic outcomes of receptor-ligand variants before spending time and $$ in the lab.

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Mamp-ml harnesses the power of protein language models (ESM-2) to build a classifier model for immunogenic outcomes.

Previously immunogenicity was primarily characterized in the lab but was a expensive bottleneck considering the variation captured computationally!

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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We then generated a pipeline that combines AlphaFold2 and LRR-Annotation to precisely extract the LRR ectodomain as well as generated features to improve model training. This even includes tracking which residues interface with the ligand!

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Mamp-ml was built upon two decades of foundational research. To generate the training data required, I manually pulled receptor and epitope sequences from every paper I could find, small or large. In total, we were able to capture over 1,300+ combinations across 11 receptors and 91 plant species.

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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mamp-ml: A deep learning approach to epitope immunogenicity in plants Eukaryotes detect biomolecules through surface-localized receptors, key signaling components. A subset of receptors survey for pathogens, induce immunity, and restrict pathogen growth. Comparative gen...

#2025ISMPMI πŸ“£ In silico screening of PRR-epitope interactions is now possible!

Here, we developed mamp-ml to predict their immunogenic outcomes without structural context. Let's accelerate engineering plant receptors for robust resistance! πŸš€πŸŒ± Small 🧡

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

15.07.2025 23:28 πŸ‘ 77 πŸ” 41 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 5
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Great presentation from @gittacoaker.bsky.social on kinase mediated defense responses and harnessing the power of language models for receptor/ ligand prediction. These LMs will help us in engineering more resilient crops #2025ISMPMI

14.07.2025 14:06 πŸ‘ 29 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

While I'm not going to be at #2025ISMPMI this year (πŸ₯²),
@kseniakrasileva.bsky.social will be there presenting on some of our latest work that was submitted to BioRxiv today. Teaser: Plant immunity + large language models will transform receptor discovery and engineering for disease resistance. πŸŒ±πŸš€

12.07.2025 00:00 πŸ‘ 19 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Microsoft AI predicts protein conformations The open-source tool goes beyond AlphaFold by finding proteins’ multiple equilibrium states and free energies

An artificial intelligence tool developed by @microsoft.com researchers can predict the multiple conformational states of proteins in minutes with a fraction of the resources required by other techniques. cen.acs.org/biological-c... #chemsky πŸ§ͺ

11.07.2025 15:44 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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The Resistance awakens: Diversity at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels informs engineering of plant immune receptors from Arabidopsis to crops Plants are natural bioengineers, and we illustrate how the stunning diversity in plant immune receptors can be translated into engineering efforts from Ara

The Resistance awakens: Diversity at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels informs engineering of plant immune receptors from Arabidopsis to crops 🧬🌱 πŸ’«πŸš€

by Chandler Sutherland @danimstevens.bsky.social @weiweibio.bsky.social Kyungyong Seong

academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

15.05.2025 23:37 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 14 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

It was great to catch up with so many people! Super thankful to Grey Monroe for the invite and enjoyed all the engaging questions. Can’t wait to wrap up this project and get it out there! 😁

04.02.2025 05:07 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

2025 has been quite a whirlwind. Learned of good funding news, had my first faculty (zoom) interview, will give my first dept. seminar on Monday at Davis all while trying to keep cool with the current news events. πŸ˜†πŸ˜¬πŸ« 

To UC Davis folks, if anyone wants to meet up on Monday, feel free to reach out.

01.02.2025 18:28 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This was such a fun review to be part of and truly a group effort! πŸ˜„please feel free to check it out. 🌱

06.12.2024 04:34 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Subtilase SBT5.2 inactivates flagellin immunogenicity in the plant apoplast - Nature Communications Plants recognize bacteria by perceiving a 22-residue epitope in flagellin. Plant-secreted SBT5.2 subtilases are found to inactivate this epitope, leading to elicitor removal and reducing costly immuni...

🌿 Excited to share our latest research on how host proteases regulate immune activation!

Read more about how SBT5.2 releases and inactivates flg22: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
rdcu.be/d1UsT

Congratulations to all involved!
#PlantImmunity #PlantPathology #PlantChemeticsLab

02.12.2024 14:05 πŸ‘ 30 πŸ” 23 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 5
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Diversification of molecular pattern recognition in bacterial NLR-like proteins - Nature Communications Avs proteins are bacterial anti-phage pattern recognition receptors evolutionarily related to eukaryotic NLRs. Here, BΓ©chon et al show that a single bacterial Avs can recognize different phage protein...

One bacterial NLR recognizing three different phage proteins vis direct interaction! How cool is that?

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

14.11.2024 21:23 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This is the one I would suggest! Was one of the first papers read as part of a phylogenetics journal club/class I took several years ago.

14.11.2024 00:04 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Sometimes the smallest things warm the soul ❀️ so thankful to be part of such a great lab group!

13.11.2024 18:10 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Tomato roots exhibit distinct, development-specific responses to bacterial-derived peptides ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Interested in how immune responses change over different stages of root development? πŸ…πŸŒ± Check out the preprint lead by @bleuschenkohl.bsky.social! πŸ₯³

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

12.11.2024 20:01 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1