ENSA

Meet ENSA senior group leader, Sebastian Schornack! Sebastian Schornack is a principal research associate at Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) focusing on the elucidation of plant and microbial molecular mechanisms underlying the colonisation of plants by filamentous pathogens and symbiotic fungi. His research team has over time adopted and become experts in diverse plant systems, from bryophytes to angiosperms. Discover more about Sebastian’s team and research: https://lnkd.in/eRMSdv_M

Legumes have a genetic “off switch”, according to new research from La Trobe University, which could help increase #crop growth and yield while also reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers. Learn how on Farming First 👇 https://bit.ly/3A0gCSV ENSA | Dugald Reid | Kasper Andersen

Maize accounts for around one-third of all consumed calories, feeding more than 300 million Africans. ENSA’s goal: develop a prototype for biological nitrogen fixation in target cereal crops like maize. The purpose: getting the world close to achieving secure, sustainable, and affordable food production. Check out ENSA’s roadmap to developing self-fertilising cereal crops: https://bit.ly/3RU9exC

According to the United Nations, sufficient levels of financing for development and more cost-effective use of them will be critical to reaching the scales of actions needed to meet food security targets before 2030. The 2024 United Nations State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (#SOFI) report, set to launch this week on the 24th, is expected to contribute a better understanding of how countries are affected by the major drivers of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition and the innovative financing options that must be leveraged to end them. Read the previous report (2023) here: https://lnkd.in/eNkA3JRj

Congratulations to Rene Geurts for being elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO)! This is a fitting recognition of Rene’s research on the symbiosis between bacteria and plants, becoming one of the outstanding scientists in the world covering the spectrum of life science research. https://lnkd.in/e_qwJ7nP Wageningen University & Research

A huge problem for smallholder farmers is overcoming soil nutrient deficiencies. In sub-Saharan Africa, where around 65% of agricultural land is degraded, this can limit yields and plant growth, and as a result incomes and food security. Scientists at Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One) grantee organization, ENSA, have made a new, exciting discovery: a genetic 'off switch' in legume plants that limits their ability to source nutrients and, in turn, fix nitrogen in soils. By turning this gene off, plants can continue to fix nitrogen regardless of the soil environment. This early discovery can inform future endeavors to increase yields with reduced reliance on synthetic fertilizers, which are often expensive or inaccessible to smallholder farmers. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eS6srE4s

🚨#JobAlert! The ENSA team at Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III is currently hiring a postdoctoral researcher with a background in bioinformatics, phylogenetics and phylogenomics. The postdoctoral researcher will be joining Pierre-Marc Delaux’s team to discover how nitrogen-fixing symbiosis evolved using phylogenomics! Are you interested in working on the evolution of the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis? Learn how to apply here: https://bit.ly/4eYf4sQ #PlantSciJobs #PlantScience #PostDoc #NitrogenFixation

“Continued nitrogen fixation could be a beneficial trait that increases nitrogen availability, both for the legume and for future crops that rely on the nitrogen left behind in the soil after legumes are grown.” Spot on analysis of biological nitrogen-fixing abilities found in legumes by ENSA scientists, Dugald Reid, Jieshun Lin and Kasper Andersen. The team has further discovered a new genetic regulator in legumes which could be key to understanding how to increase crops’ capacity to convert nitrogen from the air and improve soil quality. Find out more in the piece published in Nature Portfolio: https://bit.ly/4blSgjq

Proud of the team and this amazing story developed together with Jieshun Lin and Kasper Andersen, published today in Nature. We identified a completely unexpected regulatory mechanism that links soil nitrogen to the function of legume nodules. Jieshun designed an effective genetic screen for nodule function, eventually screening 150k plants to identify the FUN regulator. Peter Klemmed Bjørk, PhD, and later Marie Vogel Kolte in Kaspers team worked to identify zinc as a ligand of the FUN protein. This opened our eyes to this novel protein regulation and the formation of FUN protein filaments that zinc triggers. We now hope to translate this to crop legumes and drive sustainable provision of nitrogen to our farming systems. Above all, it was great fun bringing together different people and expertise. Thanks to all collaborators for critical contributions to this story. Emil Christian Poulsen Emil Dedic Taner Drace Stig Uggerhøj Andersen Marcin Nadzieja Huijun Liu Hiram Castillo-Michel Viviana Escudero Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero Thomas Boesen Jan Skov Pedersen Jens Stougaard School of Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment, La Trobe University Molecular Biology & Genetics - Aarhus University ENSA You can find the paper https://lnkd.in/gNtr2uP7 You can read the press summary https://lnkd.in/gVUt8xdr

ENSA is working to maximise beneficial microbial associations to engineer crops that make better use of nutrients already present in the air and the soil. If successful, this will offer significant environmental and cost savings benefits for smallholder farmers in rural communities and commercial farmers in high-income countries. Check out the science behind our research: https://lnkd.in/dAxC3WRw #Microbes #MicrobialAssociation #PlantScience