Volker Lipka

Thank you, Kenichi! Great to hear that you like it!

Thank you, Gitta! We are waiting with anticipation to see how our work will be received...

We proudly present a new preprint by Leon Pierdzig et al: Wall teichoic acids, glycopolymers specific to Gram-positive bacteria, trigger defense and cell death in Arabidopsis. Cysteine-rich RLKs act as key components in their perception. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

...and snapshot with a bat flying through...🦇... "blood" moon misunderstood?😂🧛

Blood moon during total lunar eclipse last night and migration of the Earth's shadow ...

Great news! Congrats and all the best for a smooth move and great start!

That said, we're more than happy with this outcome — it's certainly preferable to the typical endless rounds of additional experiments often demanded during peer review. 😉

Identification of INOSITOL PHOSPHORYLCERAMIDE SYNTHASE 2 (IPCS2) as a new rate‐limiting component in Arabidopsis pathogen entry control Polarized transport of executive defense gene products to sites of attempted microbial invasion is important for plant pathogen entry control and disease resistance. Here, we provide evidence that IN....

Our paper dx.doi.org/10.1111/tpj.... has finally been accepted and published today in The Plant Journal — congratulations to everyone involved! For those interested, the earlier bioRxiv version includes additional data that, unfortunately, didn't make it into the final publication.

Thanks, Ivo! 😉

Thank you, Tonni!

Thanks, Marc! 😉

Thanks, Jennifer!

Our findings underpin that sphingolipid production contributes to the role of the trans-Golgi network as a multi-domain sorting compartment and is required for defense against pathogen invasion.

Here, we provide evidence that INOSITOL PHOSPHORYLCERAMIDE SYNTHASE 2 (IPCS2) is involved in proper delivery of the ATP-binding cassette transporter PEN3 to polarized plasma membrane domains at plant-microbe interaction sites.

Identification of INOSITOL PHOSPHORYLCERAMIDE SYNTHASE 2 (IPCS2) as a new rate-limiting component in Arabidopsis pathogen entry control INOSITOL PHOSPHORYLCERAMIDE SYNTHASE 2 (IPCS2) is involved in the biosynthesis of complex sphingolipids at the trans-Golgi network (TGN). Here, we demonstrate a role of IPCS2 in penetration resistance...

To all colleagues who share an interest in sphingolipids, endomembrane trafficking & membrane domain formation, pathogen-induced cell polarization and entry control, here is another potentially interesting preprint: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Our analyses suggest dysregulated mRNA decay & accumulation of transcripts encoding master regulators of xylogenesis. Tissue-specific developmental reprogramming & de novo xylem formation ultimately increase the plant's water storage capacity & resistance to drought stress. (5/5)

We show that TRADE triggers sustained phosphorylation of VARICOSE via co-option of ABA-independent SNF1-Related Protein Kinases 2, which are known to control rapid and transient intracellular signaling for adaptation to osmotic stress and root development. (4/5)

We show that TRADE interacts with the conserved protein VARICOSE (VCS), a scaffold protein of processing (P) bodies, which represent cytosolic subdomains of mRNA turnover & storage formed by liquid-liquid phase separation. (3/5)

We are thrilled by and proud of this recent collaborative effort, in which we identified a single fungal effector protein, TRADE, that induces cell identity switches in dicot plants and thereby enhances plant resilience to concomitant drought stress conditions. (2/5)

A single pathogen-secreted protein reprograms plants for drought resilience Climate change-enforced drought stress conditions and diseases caused by pathogens often co-occur and represent one of the greatest challenges in plant science. Wilt pathogens that colonize water-cond...

Here is a preprint with potential interest to those fascinated by host-microbe interactions, abiotic stress adaptation, xylogenesis, P bodies & mRNA turnover, and extended phenotypes induced by microbial effectors: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... (1/5)