Marion Clavel

science.orgSelective autophagy fine-tunes plant immunity to promote cell survival during viral infectionRNA viruses co-opt host endomembranes to form replication complexes, often triggering cellular stress and immune responses. Here, we show that Arabidopsis thaliana activates selective autophagy to res...

Our work is out now! (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...). We discover a selective autophagy pathway that protects plants from the mess caused by RNA viruses. Intrigued? Follow the spaghetti trail for a summary of our findings🧵-->

homepage.boku.ac.atJose Julian – Downloads

26 Aug

The Julian lab is looking for a postdoc! if you want to help understand how plant maintain their vacuolar membrane integrity under alkaline conditions , how does the autophagy machinery help, and how this mechanism evolved, this is the place for you.☘️

Jose Julian@josejulian.bsky.social

🌱 We are hiring! I’m looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join the Julian Lab at BOKU University Vienna as part of our FWF ASTRA-funded VITAL project. 🔬 Plant cell biology & vacuolar remodeling 📅 2 years, starting early 2027 ⏳ Apply by 30 September

Marion Clavel reposted

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology

@gmivienna.bsky.social

11 Aug

The GMI @gmivienna.bsky.social of the @oeaw.bsky.social seeks to appoint a Scientific Director (f/m/x) to lead one of Europe’s premier research institutes in plant biology. Apply by Nov. 15 via GMI.search.director@oeaw.ac.at. More information: www.oeaw.ac.at/de/gmi/join-...

go.nature.comMove over, AlphaFold: open source model predicts shape of 1 billion proteinsThe new open-source atlas, generated by an AI tool called ESMFold2, vastly increases the known protein universe.

22 July

Out now! ➡️ Going viral – Plant selective autophagy swiping left and right on viral infections. We review how viruses and selective autophagy interact and propose that multiple parallel pathways collectively shape infection outcomes. Kudos to @jcmuede.bsky.social at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social.

Marion Clavel reposted

Nature

@nature.com

27 May

A newly released AI tool has generated an atlas of more than one billion predicted protein structures and billions more protein sequences. go.nature.com/4wS3Pen

In summary, we think we discovered a way for Selective Autophagy to put the brakes on hyperactive immunity:1️⃣Using enzymes that exist as filaments and monomers, 2️⃣ sense organellar damage (viruses can help it), 3️⃣recruit EDS1 (and probably more) for their vacuolar demise.🪦

mpimp-golm.mpg.dePlants hit the brakes on immunity to survive viral infectionsPlants fine-tune immunity via selective autophagy to avoid self-damage during viral infections, ensuring survival and balanced defense.

You can find our press release that summarizes our main findings here ➡️ www.mpimp-golm.mpg.de/2891069/news.... All made possible by the @gmivienna.bsky.social and @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social teams, especially Anita Bianchi, @k-roksolana.bsky.social, @roangroh.bsky.social and Xi Zhang.

So what happens if we remove all four copies of the NITRILASE receptor? Thanks to Anita (add) and Xi's effort, we now know that quad nit plants phenocopy the atg plants: they start undergoing cell death during viral infection☠️.

And finally thanks to Anita's valiant CrispRing ✂️ efforts, we have the smoking gun: if you remove EDS1 in atg plants "Alles ist in Ordnung", and plants are (as) ok (as can be with a virus roaming around). It was EDS1-dependent immunity all along…

Let’s take a closer look at our SARs. Both form filaments. Using #AlphaFold we see the AIM of NIT1 is in the dimerization interface.➡️So only the monomer is a SAR during infection. Indeed, we find monomers only in infected atg plants. Bingo, we got ourselves an inducible SAR!🎇🔥

To come full circle, we use IP-MS (I'm addicted) to capture cargos of our SARs, and we find…EDS1?! ✅It’s also in our quantitative MS and ✅thanks to the efforts of @jcmuede.bsky.social and Xi Zhang we can confirm their interaction, and EDS1 autophagy flux.

How to put the “selective” in “selective autophagy”? You do a MS screen for selective autophagy receptors (SARs)! Duh. Using multiple viruses, ATG8 isoforms and our secret weapon the AIM peptide, we discover two new SARs and map their AIMs. Both are cytosolic enzymes...🤔🧐

We also performed quantitative MS, thanks to the incredible proteomics platform of the VBC viennabiocenter.org/vbcf/proteom.... Lo and behold, we find the autophagy degradome for both viruses tested contains many proteins involved in plant immunity. Something fishy is going on in the cytosol.

What induces autophagy? Expressing a single protein from an RNA virus that hijacks mitochondrial membranes (no RNA involved!) causes autophagy activation, by the mess at the membrane! Thanks to the amazing work of @Juncai_Ma we see that particular mess resembles a full infection.

Well then, are entire mitochondria being degraded (aka #Mitophagy)? Well, no! Instead some matrix proteins that leak into the cytosol (courtesy of the viral hijacking) become autophagy cargos. Here, our model mitocargo IDH (green) with ATG8 (magenta) both in the vacuole.

So we studied #autophagy during infection, and turns out plants are having their worst day without it. Surprisingly, the virus itself doesn’t care much for lack of autophagy and goes on its merry way to replicate and spread. What then is autophagy degrading that is so important⁉️

We checked that ✅Autophagy is induced by infection in the shoot ✅but also in the root in which we can see the virus spread systemically ❤️❤️. We don’t see the VRCs being degraded, but boy do we see lots of autophagosomes.

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology

RNA viruses need to replicate their genomes. To do that, they hijack their hosts endomembranes. Can be the mito, can be the ER, you name it. This causes some dramatic (and beautiful) Viral Replication Complexes (VRCs). But we know little about the consequences for the host.

Marion Clavel reposted

@gmivienna.bsky.social

4 May

New paper! A study from the Dolan lab at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social has just been published in Current Biology. Read the publication titled "Antagonism between blue- and red-light signaling controls thallus flatness in Marchantia polymorpha" here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

4 May

Who said getaway weekends were not *also* for sampling? Going back to Potsdam with some wild Marchantia polymorpha 🥬(wrong icon sorry) for @sreeja-theresa.bsky.social to analyze as part of her predoc project at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social

Anne Roulin@anneroulin.bsky.social

A long-overdue reunion with two of my PhD office mates @thevirusmc.bsky.social and not-on-Bluesky Julie Jacquemin. Lovely day in Ulm, great company, and yes… we had to look for liverworts along the river 🧐

1 Apr

Lovely day at Charles University invited by the one and only @vanessaloi.bsky.social and the L.O.G.E lab. All about plant☘️viruses🦠, phage and bacterial-derived chloroplastic polymerases. Why keep both? The L.O.G.E lab aims to answer that question!

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology 🌱🧪

23 Feb

PhD work of Alibek! <3. "Sometimes the real treasure are the selective autophagy receptors we found along the way (marchantiales) and them dropped unceremoniously".

Yasin Dagdas@plantophagy.bsky.social

Really happy to see this one out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Alibek's drive & great coll w/ friends @gekaragoz.bsky.social & E. Hallacli resulted in a cool story that starts with our beloved #Marchantia and ends with iPSC-derived neurons 🤩🤪 A short 🧵

Marion Clavel reposted

@mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social

19 Feb

Shoutout to yesterday’s guest @eswallner.bsky.social, who visited us from @gmivienna.bsky.social for her talk “Lessons from sporeling development: How to form plant organs and meristems de novo?” - fascinating perspective on plant development!🌱 Thanks as well to @thevirusmc.bsky.social for hosting 🙏

Marion Clavel reposted

New Phytologist

@newphyt.bsky.social

17 Feb

Samplify – automated quantification of seed abortion Bente et al. @hebente.bsky.social @claudiakohler11.bsky.social @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Marion Clavel reposted

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology

@gmivienna.bsky.social

30 Jan

Duckweeds are an important plant research model but have been challenging to modify genetically. A study published in @newphyt.bsky.social by the Marí-Ordóñez group at the GMI, presents a new and highly reproducible method for genetic transformation in the duckweed species Spirodela polyrhiza.

Marion Clavel reposted

Juan Carlos De la Concepcion

@delaconcepcionjc.bsky.social

30 Jan

Please share! My group at @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social is offering a post-doctoral position (4 years). We look for a structural biologist with experience in Cryo-EM/Cryo-ET to investigate the mechanisms of host invasion by pathogenic fungi. Deadline February 28th! uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

Marion Clavel reposted

Andreas P.M. Weber 🌾🌱🧬

@apmweber.bsky.social

8 Jan

BARVISTA visualises gene expression in the barley shoot apical meristem with single-cell resolution @edgardemesa.bsky.social @usadellab.bsky.social @simonrdg.bsky.social @isaiavardanega.bsky.social @plantgen-hhu.bsky.social @hhu.de @ceplas.bsky.social www.plabipd.de/projects/han...

edgardemesa.bsky.social@edgardemesa.bsky.social

It's finally out!... Using single-cell and spatial transcriptome data, and data imputation, we created BARVISTA, a website able to perform almost genome-wide information on gene expression profiles at single-cell resolution in barley spikes! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comImputation integrates single-cell and spatial gene expression data to resolve transcriptional networks in barley shoot meristem development - Nature PlantsSpatially resolved gene expression during barley development was done by integrating an scRNA-seq dataset from cells with unknown position with spatial transcriptomics. This dataset is publicly availa...

oeaw.ac.atHow Plants Survive Heat: New Protein for Stress Resistance DiscoveredResearchers identify a new key protein involved in removing damaged proteins in plants. This could help make plants more resilient in the face of climate change.

7 Jan

Very proud of that one and very proud of @victorsmh6.bsky.social, @marintianava.bsky.social and Anita Bianchi for their amazing achievement! A must read for all selective autophagy afficinados 🍽️🪴

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology@gmivienna.bsky.social

Finally, research led by @victorsmh6.bsky.social, @marintianava.bsky.social & Anita Bianchi from the Dagdas lab identified CESAR, a key player in plant stress response via selective autophagy. The study was published in Developmental Cell. www.oeaw.ac.at/gmi/detail/n...

Marion Clavel reposted

The Sainsbury Laboratory

@thesainsburylab.bsky.social

6 Jan

Ten days left to apply for our International Undergraduate Summer School 2026 with the @johninnescentre.bsky.social and @earlhaminst.bsky.social! A unique opportunity for global undergraduates to spend 8 weeks with us on Norwich Research Park 🧬🧪 ⏰ Deadline 16 January 2026

jic.ac.ukInternational Undergraduate Summer School | John Innes CentreThe Undergraduate Summer School is a unique opportunity for undergraduates from all corners of the world to spend eight weeks at our internationally renowned research centre, partnering with fellow…

Marion Clavel reposted

Marco Incarbone

@incavirus.bsky.social

2 Dec 2025

Preprint alert! It is my great pleasure to announce the first manuscript from the lab, a story that started @gmivienna.bsky.social and was mainly accomplished by the intrepid @gesahoffmann.bsky.social at @mpi-mp-potsdam.bsky.social. A brief thread with our findings www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.orgAGO5 restricts virus vertical transmission in plant gametophytesThe propagation of a viral infection from a host parent to its progeny is known as vertical transmission, or seed transmission in plants. It allows viral infections to rapidly spread locally via polle...

16 Dec 2025

We are looking far and wide for this position! So if you are motivated, interested in academia, and want to explore the world of plant-virus interaction, we are ALSO happy to host you for a PhD! More detail below🔽☘️🦠