Papers galore: A year-end update on immune receptor networks

Read it on Medium (recommended).

These past few weeks have been bustling with activity in the field of NLR network biology, with no fewer than eight papers. Let’s dive into a roundup of these developments.

Just a few months ago, we put together a comprehensive review of plant immune receptors, specifically the nucleotide binding and leucine rich‐repeat (NLR) class, in an article whimsically titled “Making sense of the alphabet soup.” This title was a nod to the sheer abundance of genes coding for these receptors in plant genomes, numbering in the dozens, if not hundreds. However, our review is already due for an update. In just the recent weeks, no fewer than eight papers have been published, delving into various aspects of the biology of a major NLR network known as the NRC network. Here is a summary of the key advances contributed by this new body of work.