IDRIS- Improving Disease Resistance In Strawberry
Lead Research Organisation:
University of East Anglia
Department Name: Sainsbury Laboratory
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Planned Impact
Completion of this project will attract significant attention from the science, food production, retailing and public communities worldwide; indeed this proposal has already received considerable support from across the UK horticulture industry owing to the potential step-improvement it could make in breeding disease-resistant perennial crops.
Key societal benefits that this project will lead to include:
1) Reduced fungicide applications 2) Decreased carbon cost of production 3) Less pre-harvest waste within crop production 4) Ability to produce crops in a wider range of climate conditions 5) Reduced cost of fruit production 6)Improved UK food security 7) Improved ability to meet EU legislative requirements
Academic beneficiaries
This research will train two PDRAs in a variety of molecular, bioinformatic and genetics techniques that are all of use in academic and industrial settings. These skills are vital to the UK research community as limited consideration towards pre-breeding of perennial food crops is provided by other UK academic institutions. The mapping progeny that will be generated and genotyped will be an important resource for future studies, as it is expected to segregate for a wide range of agronomically important traits (Benefit within 3-5 years). Published research from this project will facilitate the rapid development of cultivars, by international plant breeders, with improved disease resistance (Benefit within 3-5 years).
Commercial beneficiaries - (Soft fruit sector - UK)
This project, leading to disease-resistant strawberries in the UK, will help to protect and enhance the productivity and competitiveness of the UK soft fruit industry through reduced fungicidal inputs and by extending the life of field plantings (reducing production costs as current standard practice is for growers to replant every year - Benefit within 3 years). Disease resistant cultivars will also enable growers to reduce waste, and associated costs, and to produce crops across a wider range of climatic conditions - therefore benefiting the UK food security agenda (Benefit within 5-10 years). UK plant breeders, propagators, marketing companies and grower groups will all benefit from this research though subsequent commercialisation of research (as has been the case with previous research projects feeding into the EMR strawberry breeding programme). Ultimately, cultivars developed downstream form this pre-breeding will be protected by EU Plant Variety Rights to ensure maximum benefit to the UK economy. (Benefit within 2-4 years.)
Public and retail sector (especially supermarkets)
The improved disease-resistant cultivars will be ideally suited to production using integrated pest and disease management systems which are aimed at eliminating residues in fruit. This the public and retailers will have greater access to residue-free produce. More reliable production methods will similarly improve food availability and there is potential to reduce costs in the supply chain (through reduced inputs). Several UK retailers aim to double sales of UK-produced fruit by 2020; this project will assist that aim and improve UK productivity and competitiveness (Benefit within 5-10 years).
Government and policy benefits
The public will benefit through increased food security and sustainability, minimising fungicide residues and minimising the environmental impact from fungicides and soil fumigants on the environment. This feeds in to many UK Government and EU policy agendas including: pesticides (reducing residues), water (ability to grow nearer water courses), climate (growing crops perennially will improve carbon sequestration) and environment (reduced carbon and pesticides). (Benefit within 3-5 years)
Third sector
Environmental lobby groups within the third sector will benefit from this research through reduced fungicide use, less waste and cleaner water courses (Benefit within 2-4 years).
Key societal benefits that this project will lead to include:
1) Reduced fungicide applications 2) Decreased carbon cost of production 3) Less pre-harvest waste within crop production 4) Ability to produce crops in a wider range of climate conditions 5) Reduced cost of fruit production 6)Improved UK food security 7) Improved ability to meet EU legislative requirements
Academic beneficiaries
This research will train two PDRAs in a variety of molecular, bioinformatic and genetics techniques that are all of use in academic and industrial settings. These skills are vital to the UK research community as limited consideration towards pre-breeding of perennial food crops is provided by other UK academic institutions. The mapping progeny that will be generated and genotyped will be an important resource for future studies, as it is expected to segregate for a wide range of agronomically important traits (Benefit within 3-5 years). Published research from this project will facilitate the rapid development of cultivars, by international plant breeders, with improved disease resistance (Benefit within 3-5 years).
Commercial beneficiaries - (Soft fruit sector - UK)
This project, leading to disease-resistant strawberries in the UK, will help to protect and enhance the productivity and competitiveness of the UK soft fruit industry through reduced fungicidal inputs and by extending the life of field plantings (reducing production costs as current standard practice is for growers to replant every year - Benefit within 3 years). Disease resistant cultivars will also enable growers to reduce waste, and associated costs, and to produce crops across a wider range of climatic conditions - therefore benefiting the UK food security agenda (Benefit within 5-10 years). UK plant breeders, propagators, marketing companies and grower groups will all benefit from this research though subsequent commercialisation of research (as has been the case with previous research projects feeding into the EMR strawberry breeding programme). Ultimately, cultivars developed downstream form this pre-breeding will be protected by EU Plant Variety Rights to ensure maximum benefit to the UK economy. (Benefit within 2-4 years.)
Public and retail sector (especially supermarkets)
The improved disease-resistant cultivars will be ideally suited to production using integrated pest and disease management systems which are aimed at eliminating residues in fruit. This the public and retailers will have greater access to residue-free produce. More reliable production methods will similarly improve food availability and there is potential to reduce costs in the supply chain (through reduced inputs). Several UK retailers aim to double sales of UK-produced fruit by 2020; this project will assist that aim and improve UK productivity and competitiveness (Benefit within 5-10 years).
Government and policy benefits
The public will benefit through increased food security and sustainability, minimising fungicide residues and minimising the environmental impact from fungicides and soil fumigants on the environment. This feeds in to many UK Government and EU policy agendas including: pesticides (reducing residues), water (ability to grow nearer water courses), climate (growing crops perennially will improve carbon sequestration) and environment (reduced carbon and pesticides). (Benefit within 3-5 years)
Third sector
Environmental lobby groups within the third sector will benefit from this research through reduced fungicide use, less waste and cleaner water courses (Benefit within 2-4 years).
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sophien Kamoun (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Pais M
(2013)
From pathogen genomes to host plant processes: the power of plant parasitic oomycetes.
in Genome biology
Yoshida K
(2013)
The rise and fall of the Phytophthora infestans lineage that triggered the Irish potato famine.
in eLife
Alfred J
(2014)
New horizons for plant translational research.
in PLoS biology
Kamoun S
(2015)
The Top 10 oomycete pathogens in molecular plant pathology.
in Molecular plant pathology
Derevnina L
(2016)
Emerging oomycete threats to plants and animals.
in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
Kamoun S
(2017)
Stranger in a strange land: the experiences of immigrant researchers.
in Genome biology
Michelmore R
(2017)
Foundational and Translational Research Opportunities to Improve Plant Health.
in Molecular plant-microbe interactions : MPMI
Adachi H
(2019)
NLR singletons, pairs, and networks: evolution, assembly, and regulation of the intracellular immunoreceptor circuitry of plants.
in Current opinion in plant biology
Sophien Kamoun
(2020)
Ten things we learned in 2010-2019 (aside from everything else)
in Zenodo
| Title | A biologist's poem |
| Description | This 'real and singular thing'. A piece of code in its own genome. A copy from the past, multipliable, repeatable, yet mutable. You couldn't help feeling that you had stolen this sequence from its owner. You had transferred a piece of life into the human consciousness. with apologies to Wim Wenders /w @SaskiaHogenhout |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | Positive feedback on social media |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/170774045435/a-biologists-poem |
| Title | I Will Survive (biotroph remix) |
| Description | A plant pathology inspired song. I Will Survive (biotroph remix) [with apologies to Gloria Gaynor] Oh, no, not I I will survive Oh, as long as I know how to infect you I'll stay alive I've got all my life to live I've got all my spores to give And I'll survive I will survive, hey, hey |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | >15K impressions on social media and ~250 engagements |
| URL | https://twitter.com/KamounLab/status/1098214166723215361 |
| Title | Video animation: Plants have an immune system and it's complicated |
| Description | Just like humans, plants have an immune system that they use to fend off pathogens and pests. Research involving plant immunity was guided by Harold Flor's influential "gene-for-gene" model but this model is now supplanted by a more complex view of pant immunity. Disease resistance genes appear to work together in intricate networks that enable plants to detect and resist parasites more effectively. An in-depth understanding of the immune system can help us breed disease resistant crops. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | ~10K views on YouTube 511 engagements and >20K impressions on Twitter |
| URL | https://youtu.be/mlp2mQTEVtQ |
| Title | You Can Call Me Al |
| Description | A plant pathology song [With apologies to Paul Simon] A spore lands on a leaf It wonders where it landed now Why am I not a generalist The rest of my life is so hard I need pathogenicity I want a shot at infection Don't want to end up avirulent In an avirulence graveyard HR HR Cell death in the epidermis Far away from the mesophyll ROS burst ROS burst Get these receptors away from me You know I don't find this host amusing anymore If you're a Brassicaceae I can be your parasite My name is Albugo But buddy when you call me You can call me Al A spore lands on a leaf It landed on a friendly host now Got a short little burst of infection And wo my hyphae are so long Here's my spore and haustoria What if I mutate here Who'll be my new host Now that my old-host is Gone Gone I spread back down the valley With some roly-poly shaped spores All along along There were cabbages and mustards There were shifts and jumps If you're a Brassicaceae I can be your parasite My name is Albugo But buddy when you call me You can call me Al If you're a Brassicaceae I can be your parasite My name is Albugo But buddy when you call me You can call me Al |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Impact | Included to teaching and outreach material by several colleagues throughout the world |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/632416370219499520/you-can-call-me-al-with-apologies-to-paul |
| Description | Genome sequences of strawberry pathogens |
| Exploitation Route | Genome sequences of strawberry pathogens have enabled effectoromics - effector based screens for disease resistance |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink |
| Description | Journals 2.0: a roadmap to reinvent scientific publishing |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | Promoted preprints and open science and a different, more sustainable, form of scientific publishing therefore accelerating the dissemination of science and reducing the exorbitant costs of scientific publishing. This vision describes a radically different publishing model that would reinvent the concept of a scientific journal into a live and open forum of scientific debate and analysis. This model centers on a full integration of the preprint ecosystem into the journal interface. The journal would only accept submission of articles that have been posted as preprints. All evaluations and commissioned reviews of submitted articles would be published as soon as received on the journal website and linked to the preprint version. Editors would operate as always sifting through submitted papers and seeking external reviewers when necessary. But they will also consider author-led and community crowdsourced reviews, which would be appended to the preprint. As the reviews accumulate and revisions are submitted, the journal editors would initiate a consultation process, and when satisfied with a given version promote it to a formal article. The editor's role becomes more akin to moderator than gatekeeper. The process doesn't have to be static. As the community further comments on the article and follow-up studies are published, editors may decide to commission synthetic review or commentary articles to address emerging issues. I would also envision that the paper is linked to related articles in a "knowledge network" database, and that article tags are revised to reflect new knowledge, e.g. "independently validated". The journal would therefore become less of a static repository of scientific articles, and more of a moderated forum of scientific discussion. |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/1466784#.XH2SPi2cawQ |
| Description | Point of view: wither pre-publication peer review to reinvent scientific publishing |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | Promoted open science and preprints among the research community therefore resulting in more rapid dissemination of scientific findings. |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/178573217080/point-of-view-wither-pre-publication-peer-review |
| Title | Coomassie Brilliant Blue (CBB) staining for Rubisco is an appropriate loading control for western blots from plant material |
| Description | Background - Having an adequate loading control for a western blot is essential for the interpretation of the results. There are two common loading control methods for western blots of proteins from plant material: (i) using specific antibodies to detect for a reference protein, such as actin, tubulin, or GAPDH (Li et al. 2011); and (ii) treating the membrane with Ponceau or Coomassie stains to assay the levels of a constitutively expressed protein, such as Rubisco (Zhang et al. 2017; Lim et al. 2018; Zhuo et al. 2014). Comparative studies in the mammalian biology field have determined that these loading control methods-antibody detection versus staining-are roughly equivalent in their linearity (Romero-Calvo et al. 2010; Wilender and Ekblad, 2011), and thus serve as comparable quality controls. In the plant biology field, it is sometimes debated as to whether staining for Rubisco is an appropriate loading control, due to the high abundance of this protein in the cell. Results - We undertook an experiment to determine whether the range of detection of staining for Rubisco is similar to that of antibody-based detection of a reference protein. We loaded total protein extract from Nicotiana benthamiana leaves transiently expressing GFP into a gel at a range of effective sample volumes, and the resulting western blot was treated with anti-GFP antibodies as well as stained with Coomassie Brilliant Blue (CBB) (Fig. 1a). Quantification of the GFP bands in the western blot and the Rubisco bands in the CBB stained membrane indicated that these detection methods have similar linear correlations between the loading volumes of total protein extract and the detectable band intensities (Fig. 1b). In addition, quantification of a random protein of lower abundance in the CBB stained membrane also showed similar linearity (Fig. 1b). Conclusions - These results indicate that CBB staining for Rubisco can be an appropriate loading control for western blots from plant material. This representative experiment is consistent with results from other western blot experiments that we routinely perform in our laboratory. |
| Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Feedback from social media indicates it is useful to many others. |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/2557821#.XH2gji2cbYI |
| Description | Collaboration with Prof. Suomeng Dong |
| Organisation | Nanjing Agricultural University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Transcriptome specialization following host-jumps in the Irish potato famine pathogen lineage The collaborator Prof. Kamoun is a world leading scientist in the field of plant-microbe interactions. Short visits of young Chinese scientists to Prof. Kamoun's group at The Sainsbury Lab to carry out collaboration will greatly enhance their career development by exposure to an outstanding research environment and cutting edge scientific research. Among the benefits, the visiting scientists will enhance their communication and presentation skills by joining weekly lab meetings and presenting their own work. Overall, these activities will help foster the next generation scientists of China and enable them to build lasting connections with UK science. More specifically, Chinese research community will access high-quality and large-scale PacBio sequencing of potato late blight genomes. The CRISPR/Cas9 tool that modified in this project will be shared with the wider Chinese Phytopathology community. Also, the open source aspects of the project would serve as an exemplar for the wider community. China is the biggest potato producer in the world yet late blight remains the number disease and problem of the Chinese potato crop. This project would ultimately provide useful information for engineering |
| Collaborator Contribution | Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) is the center of excellence for oomycete (Phytophthora) research in China. After joining NAU in 2014, Prof. Suomeng Dong has quickly developed into one of the most energetic new wave scientists in this field, having studied several aspects of Phytophthora gene regulation, such as discovering m6A DNA methylation and alternative splicing pathways. He received prestigious awards such as Chinese National Science Fund for Excellent Young investigator and National Thousand Youth Talents Plan. Thus, the UK team would greatly benefit from the collaboration not only from an intellectual perspective but also from the practical aspects of technology transfer, method development and exchange of biomaterial. Visits to China would be extremely productive as they will tap into years of experience with Phytophthora, notably CRISPR/Cas gene editing. The collaboration would not only benefit the Kamoun Lab but also other groups at TSL that have an interest in P. infestans, e.g. the groups of Jonathan Jones and Wenbo Ma. This project will also strengthen links between the Norwich and China, given Centre of Excellence for Plant and Microbial Science (CEPAMS)-a budding partnership between the Norwich based John Innes Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). |
| Impact | 11 joint publications per PubMed (March 2021) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=kamoun+AND+dong |
| Start Year | 2012 |
| Description | #MPMI2019Posters |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | We published the Kamoun Lab posters presented at #ICMPMI2019 Congress on Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Glasgow, July 14-18, on @ZENODO_ORG. Kudos to all authors for their amazing contributions! Joe Win, Mauricio Contreras, Benjamin Petre, Tolga O Bozkurt, Martin H Schattat, Jan Sklenar, Sophien Kamoun. (2019). Host-interactor screens of RXLR effectors reveal plant processes manipulated by Phytophthora. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3351297 Mauricio Contreras, Benjamin Petre, Tolga Bozkurt, Joe Win, & Sophien Kamoun. (2019). Phytophthora RXLR-WY effectors cooperate to modulate host vesicle trafficking. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3349841 Erin Zess, Yasin Dagdas, Abbas Maqbool, Tolga O Bozkurt, Mark Banfield, & Sophien Kamoun. (2019). Effector adaptation in a host-specialized lineage of Phytophthora. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3349901 Chih-Hang Wu, & Sophien Kamoun. (2019). A genetically unlinked NLR network that modulates plant immunity against diverse pathogens originated from an ancestral gene cluster. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3350801 Hiroaki Adachi, Mauricio Contreras, Adeline Harant, Chih-hang Wu, Lida Derevnina, Toshiyuki Sakai, Sophien Kamoun. (2019). A widely conserved N-terminal motif in the coiled-coil domain of NLR immune receptors is required for activation of hypersensitive cell death. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3349850 Thorsten Langner, Luis B. Gomez-Luciano, Adeline Harant, Joe Win, & Sophien Kamoun. (2019). The dark matter of genomics: mini-chromosomes as drivers of host adaptation in the blast fungus. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3349735 Yohann Petit, Joe Win, Thorsten Langner, Adeline Harant, Ryohei Terauchi, Mark Banfield, & Sophien Kamoun. (2019). New effectors from the multihost blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae target HMA domain containing host proteins. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3352212 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/186817612845/mpmi2019posters-we-published-the-kamoun-lab |
| Description | 2Blades: the story behind the scientist |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | We sat down with Sophien to find out more about the story behind the scientist: Could you explain your research in 5 words? Never bet against the pathogen. Okay, now in a few more words.. Plants have an immune system, and it's complicated. This drives rapid evolution of pathogens, so we aim to understand the similarities in mechanisms of virulence and adaptation between plant pathogens and the disease-resistance toolkit and regulatory networks that underlie plant immunity. Could you explain one technique you use regularly? CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. We love it, it's totally transformed how we do research. The best way to explain this is that the genome is like a book, consisting of text, and with CRISPR-Cas9 we can modify just a few specific letters in the book. This is the ultimate in precision for genetic modification. What about your field of research is most exciting to you right now? The most exciting area to me is how we're finding evolutionary similarities between immune receptors from different plant species, in terms of how they activate immunity. These similarities are both evolutionary and functional. What keeps you busy when you're not in the lab? Traveling, walking, movies, food. What would you be doing if you weren't a scientist? I would be a scientist - there's no other option! I would be a scientist even if wasn't paid for it! What's the most enjoyable thing about your job? The sense of excitement when you discover something new and then sharing that experience with your colleagues. How has the 2Blades Foundation been beneficial to your work? 2Blades has brought a high degree of professionalism and expertise to The Sainsbury Laboratory in terms of our capacity to interact with industrial partners. We didn't have this before, so it's been a highly synergistic interaction. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://2blades.org/voices/prof-sophien-kamoun/ |
| Description | A brief introduction to Pioneering Women in Plant Pathology |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In this video, Sophien Kamoun briefly introduces the inspiring book "Pioneering Women in Plant Pathology". Learn about pioneering woman plant pathologists Johanna Westerdijk, Eva Sansome, and................Rosalind Franklin. The book was published by the American Phytopathological Society and edited by Jean Ristaino. Get your own copy at https://my.apsnet.org/ItemDetail?iProductCode=43597 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/Mr5XC5d_gfg |
| Description | Biologist: "The mobilization of our country's scientists has been impressive" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Professor Sophien Kamoun, group leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory, discusses how he and his colleagues have pivoted from studying plant pathogens to tracing a human pathogen at the heart of a global emergency, and how scientists unable to access wet labs can still contribute to research. Can you describe what your role involved before the COVID-19 pandemic and how your focus has changed because of the pandemic? I normally investigate topics related to plant pathology and plant immunity. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn't changed the focus of my research, but I was tasked within our laboratory to coordinate projects on innovations that could rapidly scale-up diagnostics. Please tell us about any COVID-19 related projects you have been involved with and what they have achieved so far. We used a bottom-up approach, which fits best with the ethos of The Sainsbury Laboratory. First we made an open call for ideas and volunteers in late March. I was truly impressed by the willingness of many of our scientists-from students to team leaders-to contribute their expertise and know-how. Two teams immediately came together and sprung into action. One team has focused on implementing the Cas13a/SHERLOCK method for SARS-CoV-2 detection, while the second one is working on adapting "toehold switch" detection to this coronavirus. At the moment we are still testing these protocols with synthetic controls and haven't yet worked with clinical samples. We're interested in how science works during a crisis, and how scientists have responded to these unprecedented circumstances. What have you done differently owing to this being an urgent, emergency situation? First, it's important to appreciate that people respond differently to a crisis like this. My first advice to everyone in my team and my collaborators was to carefully consider their own mental state and address any anxiety they may experience. I personally find exercise, meditation music and connecting with friends and family to be very helpful in relieving stress. It's rather useless to try to get intellectual work done when you're in the wrong frame of mind. This is true at any time but it's even more relevant during this situation. So just like athletes before a sporting event, scientists need to learn to chill and relax. The second advice is to revisit objectives and expectations. I advised my team to have a plan. What are your revised goals? How realistic are they? What would it take to achieve them? Perhaps there is also a silver lining in this crisis. In biology, everyone has been busy producing huge amounts of data. But if the data isn't shared and published, it's generally useless. Now that we are kept away from the wet labs, perhaps there is more time to process and share unpublished datasets. If you have such data, then this is the time to curate it and share it. There are many open platforms that allow you to publish datasets and barebone mini-publications, which shouldn't take that long to produce. The prevailing paradigm in biology is that those who produce the data are expected to publish it. But why should that always be the case? If the dataset is worth sharing, then anyone who curates it and analyses it should be in a position to publish it (with due credit to everyone involved of course). That still would be a valued and valuable contribution to add to a CV. We have identified such old unpublished datasets in my lab, and we hope that any extra time offered by this situation would allow us to share and release these data in the coming weeks. How are you communicating information from your work so that it can be utilised around the world? Beyond the typical channels, social media continues to serve as a key medium for communicating and disseminating information. Many scientists are on Twitter and I have been posting more frequently on Facebook to reach out to scientists in developing countries given that they tend to be more active on this platform. For instance, Facebook has proven important for sharing knowledge with communities and help groups in Tunisia, my country of origin. It's also worth highlighting the key role that preprint servers have played in this crisis. First, preprints, such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, have accelerated the dissemination of new COVID-19 research. Second, preprints allow immediate sharing of all those papers that scientists are writing up during lockdowns. As an affiliate for bioRxiv, I get to see and approve submitted papers, and there has been up to 200 papers in the queue. I don't think the classic journal model can cope with such a surge in submissions as the system is overloaded. Just imagine how we would cope without bioRxiv at the moment! All that good science that would be held up for months and months for no one to see. Can you talk us through some of the challenges of working during these strange times, for example the adaptations required to keep yourself and staff safe; trying to source in-demand equipment and reagents; or the effect on non-COVID research projects/departmental business? The Sainsbury Laboratory and other Institutes on the Norwich Research Park reacted proactively to the crisis. I think the fact that we have a lot of contact with colleagues in China made us more attuned to the scale of the problem. We implemented social distancing and reduced occupancy policies early, in the week of March 9th. We have made our own hand-sanitiser and distributed it widely. Some of our staff arranged to collect and distribute PPE to the hospital, including masks received from collaborators in China. In addition, several members of our Laboratory have volunteered at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals to help scale-up COVID-19 diagnostics. The laboratory is currently closed except for essential maintenance work and the COVID-19 projects. Most of the other work that is currently taking place is either computational or focused on analysing and publishing previously generated data. All meetings have moved to online platforms. How would you describe the bioscience sector's interaction with public health bodies and Government? I think the sector has fully engaged with the crisis. The mobilization of our country's scientists has been impressive, as evidenced for example by the number of volunteers. However, like many of my colleagues, I was surprised by the government's initial response - the general impression I had is that there was a period of laisser-faire before robust measures were implemented. It seemed imprudent to me that as Lombardy went into lockdown, you couldn't take a train from Milan to Rome but you could fly from Milan to Heathrow with absolutely no checks whatsoever upon arrival. I was also stunned by the infamous press briefing of Thursday March 12th when the mitigation strategy of herd immunity was announced. Fortunately, the scientific community reacted strongly, and I was very impressed by the broad pushback. I agree with the view that, in due time, we must investigate what happened to be better prepared for the next pandemic. Looking forward, I hope that there will be a better appreciation of the importance of curiosity-driven fundamental research. Let's reflect on the fact that COVID-19 diagnostics are based on PCR-a method that was discovered through a scientist's creative exploration of an idea, not through top-down impact driven research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-covid-19/189-biologist/biologist-covid-19/2327-the-mobiliz... |
| Description | Can a Biologist Fix a Smartphone? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Prof. Sophien Kamoun, FRS, will explore this idea using the smartphone as a metaphor for living organisms. He will discuss how the capacity to read and edit the genetic language encoded in the genome has enabled biologists to access the codical domain of living systems in an unprecedented fashion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/IrIQt1BHWkQ |
| Description | CropLife FoodHeroes Series: What inspires plant scientists and why is their job so important? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Why did you want to be a plant scientist? I became a scientist because I grew up being extremely curious about the natural world. I wanted to know how living organisms function. How they became the way they are. Plant pathology came later after realized that I may as well study a field of biology that is important to the human condition. This inspires me to narrow the gap between fundamental and applied research. My aim is to perform cutting-edge research and significantly advance knowledge on economically important plant pathogen systems. In contrast, much research focuses on model systems and is therefore further steps away from practical applications. Can you explain what your job involves? As an academic scientist, I am in the business of knowledge. My job is to generate new knowledge to advance science, and to influence others to pursue new directions, generate more knowledge and apply it to address practical problems. My job is also to communicate scientific knowledge and discoveries to my peers and to a broader audience, including the general public. What are the plant diseases that you are working on? I work primarily on blight and blast diseases. Throughout my career, I have worked primarily on the Irish potato famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans. More recently, I was inspired by the sense of urgency brought upon by the February 2016 Bangladeshi wheat blast epidemic to expand my research to blast fungi. I aim to apply the concepts and ideas I developed throughout my career to a problem with an immediate impact on global food security. Can you describe how damaging these diseases can be for farmers? Plant diseases are a major constraint for achieving food security. Losses caused by fungal plant pathogens alone account for enough to feed several billion people. Magnaporthe oryzae, the causal agent of blast disease of cereals, is among the most destructive plant pathogens, causing losses in rice production that, if mitigated, could feed up to 740 million people. This pathogen has emerged since the 1980s as an important pathogen of wheat seriously limiting the potential for wheat production in South America. In 2016, wheat blast was detected for the first time in Asia with reports of a severe epidemic in Bangladesh. The outbreak is particularly worrisome because wheat blast has already spread further to India, and is threatening major wheat producing areas in neighboring South Asian countries. Global trade and a warming climate are contributing to the spread and establishment of blast diseases as a global problem for cereal production and a present and clear danger to food security. Why is your profession important in the challenge to feed the world? Plant pathology delivers science-driven solutions to plant diseases. In particular, genetic solutions through disease resistant crop varieties can be sustainable and environmentally friendly. What inspires you about your job? Knowledge and people. The thrill of learning something new every day is addictive. Sharing the experience with others -be they students, colleagues, stakeholders or members of the public - is priceless. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://croplife.org/industry-profile/sophien-kamoun/ |
| Description | Don't perish! A step by step guide to writing a scientific paper |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Sophien Kamoun's presentation to the Norwich research Park PhD student. A step by step guide to writing scientific papers. April 1, 2020. See slides at https://www.slideshare.net/SophienKamoun/dont-perish-a-step-by-step-guide-to-writing-a-scientific-paper See summary and notes at https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/614297962173120512/dont-perish-a-step-by-step-guide-to-writing-a This presentation is part of a workshop about writing scientific papers. It describes a 10 step guide for writing papers. 1. Create a folder 2. Write a story line 3. Make list of Figures 4. Finalize Figures 5. Write the Results 6. Write the Intro 7. Write the Discussion 8. Assemble the Abstract 9. Write the Title 10. Post it on bioRxiv |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/LUmf7vEFxYI |
| Description | Everything you wanted to know about research integrity but never dared to ask |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Sophien Kamoun's talk to the Norwich research Park PhD student. May 7, 2019. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.slideshare.net/SophienKamoun/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-research-integrity-but-... |
| Description | FIRST INVITED SEMINAR SERIES |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | FIRST INVITED SEMINAR SERIES Kiki Kots, Wageningen University, The Netherlands "Shining a light on oomcyete biology; live cell imaging of the Phytophthora cytoskeleton" Monday November 11, 2019 Huang Tan, Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, China "Study the role of pectin in pathogen associated molecular pattern pattern (PAMP)-triggered inhibition of growth/immunity" Monday October 14, 2019 Chuyun Gao, Nanjing Agricultural University, China "NLR immune receptor Rpi-vnt1 provides light-dependent resistance against Irish famine pathogen by guarding chloroplast protein GLYK" Thursday September 17, 2019 Alexandre Leary, Imperial College London "A plant RabGAP negatively regulates autophagy and immunity to the Irish potato famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans" Tuesday August 7, 2018 Soichiro Asuke, Kobe University, Japan "Elucidating the genetic mechanism of host parasitic specialization of Pyricularia oryzae to wheat" Tuesday June 5, 2018 Michael Schon, Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria "Utilizing RNA ends for tissue-specific transcriptome assembly and degradome analysis" Friday February 16, 2018 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/188924706750/first-invited-seminar-series-fiss |
| Description | GROW Webinar: CRISPR Crops: Plant Genome Editing Made Easy |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In the second GROW Webinar, Dr. Sophien Kamoun, head of the Sainsbury Laboratory, presented on CRISPR Crops: Plant Genome Editing Made Easy, with a closer look at CRISPR advances in plant science and their relevance to genebanks and conservation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://vimeo.com/513893418 |
| Description | Growing the Future-a UK Plant Sciences Federation and a Royal Society of Biology report |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Growing the future is a report from the UK Plant Sciences Federation (UKPSF), a special advisory committee of the Royal Society of Biology. Launched in January 2019, the report highlights to policymakers and others the excellence of plant science in the UK, and its importance to the biosciences, the economy, and society both at home and around the world. In Growing the future, the UKPSF describes the potential of plant science to improve fundamental knowledge, enable better diet quality, increase crop productivity, enhance environmental sustainability and create new products and manufacturing processes. The report section on Plant health highlighted our research on potato late blight which dates back to the 1990s and has established the fundamental knowledge that has now enabled commercialisation of the first GMO potato plants among various applications. The report also highlighted our work on gene editing in tomato, notably the development of the fungus resistant tomato line Tomelo, which was highlighted by a picture taken from our publication Nekrasov, V., Wang, C., Win, J., Lanz, C., Weigel, D., and Kamoun, S. 2017. Rapid generation of a transgene-free powdery mildew resistant tomato by genome deletion. Scientific Reports, 7:482. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019 |
| URL | https://www.rsb.org.uk/policy/groups-and-committees/ukpsf/about-ukpsf/growing-the-future-report |
| Description | Growing the Future-a UK Plant Sciences Federation and a Royal Society of Biology report featuring Innovations in #PlantHealth by TSL scientists |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Growing the Future-a UK Plant Sciences Federation and a Royal Society of Biology report has featured Innovations in #PlantHealth by TSL scientists and the broader oomycete and gene editing communities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/182471762520/growing-the-futurea-uk-plant-sciences |
| Description | Hello kids, I'm a biologist! |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | My presentation to the 9-10 year old children of the British International School of Tunis. March 21, 2019. Here you can find notes, acknowledgements and links to the videos: Slide 1. The action shot is from this interview with CropLife International. More on my background can be found on the Wikipedia English and French pages, and these interviews "Stranger in a strange land: the experiences of immigrant researchers" and ISMPMI Interactions InterViews. For popular science writing, check the PlantVillage article "https://medium.com/@plantvillage/keeping-up-with-the-plant-destroyers-9c0047899683". Slide 3. The Australian outback ~1994 with our clunky Ford Falcon. With @SaskiaHogenhout. Slide 4. You go there to chase insects and instead insects start chasing you #fieldworkfail #Australia Slide 5. This Scanning Electron Microscopy shot of a tiger beetle head is courtesy of Charles R. Krause who captured it in 1982 on a Hitachi S-500 SEM. Slide 6. Rivacindela eburneola, Cicindelidae, Coleoptera. I took this shot in 1994 at Lake Gilmore, Western Australia. Slide 7. The fastest running insect in the world. BBC Earth. Slide 8. Ed Yong's National geographic piece on The Predator That Becomes Blind When It Runs After Prey. Slide 9. Cornell University Daniel Zurek and Cole Gilbert study on how tiger beetles use their antennae to sense obstacles at high speed. Slide 10. What's in this picture? #PlantBlindness Slide 11. The time-lapse video of potato plants infected by the Irish famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans was produced by Remco Stam. Slide 12. I received the image of the potato farmer from Dr. Tarlochan Thind, Punjab Agricultural University. He is quoted in this story about potato late blight in India. Slide 13. Different varieties of potato are either destroyed by the blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans or fully resistant (immune). The photo is courtesy of Vivianne Vleeshouwers at Wageningen University. Slide 14. This stunning animation of the bacterium Xanthomonas infecting tomato plants was produced by students at Halle University working with Prof. Ulla Bonas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/183672043215/hello-kids-im-a-biologist |
| Description | How to select a PhD lab? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I regularly get this question from predocs. How do I select a PhD lab? How do I decide on a good supervisor? Should I select a lab based on a project? Below is a hodgepodge of the answers I generally give. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/3531916#.Xl6WJS2cbDY |
| Description | Interview with Matthew Gudgin on BBC Radio |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Sophien Kamoun's interview with Matthew Gudgin on BBC Radio following election as Fellow of the Royal Society. This includes a discussion of plant blindness. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/173740235230/sophiens-interview-with-matthew-gudgin-on-bbc |
| Description | Keeping up with the plant killers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The United Nations has declared 2020 the International Year of Plant Health (IYPH). In this timely talk, Prof. Sophien Kamoun introduces you to the secret life of the parasites that colonise plants. Ever since Heinrich Anton de Bary called the microbe that causes the potato blight a plant killer, we have learned much about how these microbes cause disease and fight off the plant immune system. Some of these plant pathogens even turn their plant hosts into living puppets or Zombie plants. Others are threatening our crops and driving the global food crisis. Plant pathologists like Sophien Kamoun are hard at work learning more about these parasites and applying new knowledge and technologies to build disease-resistant crops. The speaker for this talk was Professor Sophien Kamoun, Senior Scientist at The Sainsbury Laboratory and Professor of Biology at The University of East Anglia The Linnean Society of London is the world's oldest active biological society. Founded in 1788, the Society takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). https://www.linnean.org/ Follow us on social media: https://twitter.com/LinneanSociety https://www.facebook.com/linneansociety/ https://www.instagram.com/linneansociety |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/R5GJWHmq2_k |
| Description | Keynote lecture at ICPP 2018: The Edge of Tomorrow - Plant Health in the 21st Century |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | ICPP2018 International Congress of Plant Pathology Plenary Session - Plant Health is Earth's Wealth, Boston, USA, Monday, July 30, 2018 The talk was broadcast on a live stream and is available on YouTube https://youtu.be/MYysIKSYY_8 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/176385835530/the-edge-of-tomorrow-plant-health-in-the-21st |
| Description | Le Professeur tunisien Sophien Kamoun intègre la prestigieuse Royal Society de Londres |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | News article in the North African media https://www.huffpostmaghreb.com |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.huffpostmaghreb.com/entry/le-professeur-tunisien-sophien-kamoun-integre-la-prestigieuse-... |
| Description | Meeting with HE Mr. Slim Khalbous Ministre de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique of Tunisia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | A busy week in Tunisia. A great honour to receive the Presidential Research Award from HE Mr. Slim Khalbous Ministre de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique. Also, present at the ceremony were Mme Samia Charfi Directrice Générale de la Recherche Scientifique et M. Abdelmajid Ben Amara Directeur Général de l'Enseignement Supérieur. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/183671401535/a-busy-week-in-tunisia-a-great-honour-to-receive |
| Description | Open Science in the Age of Pandemics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern African Society for Plant Pathology, January 20th, 2021. Hosted by FABI https://www.fabinet.up.ac.za |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/PGh-klsemiM |
| Description | Overcoming plant blindness in science, education, and society |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Plants are amazing organisms. They make up around 80% of all biomass on Earth, play important roles in almost all ecosystems, and support humans and other animals by providing shelter, oxygen, and food. Despite this, many people have a tendency to overlook plants, a phenomenon known as "plant blindness." Here, we explore the reasons behind plant blindness, discuss why some people are relatively unaffected by it, and promote education around plant science to overcome this phenomenon and raise awareness of the importance of plants in the wider community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ppp3.51 |
| Description | Plant pathogens at science, art, writing program (SAW). |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Several team members spent a day at a school to tell the kids about plant pathogens. This was part of SAW http://www.sawtrust.org See also http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/120786305365/marina-ronny-ola-and-joe-at-school-today |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/120786305365/marina-ronny-ola-and-joe-at-school-today |
| Description | Plantae: LOCKDOWN CONVERSATIONS How to tide over the Covid-19 pandemic? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | "Revisit your objectives and expectations. Have a plan" 1. This current lockdown seems to be unprecedented in recent history. How is your lab coping up? These are challenging and uncertain times for all of us and for our friends and families. I have encouraged everyone in my lab to regularly check in and update the team on how they are doing and so on. I have also encouraged everyone to make use of the lab network as much as possible to stay connected and seek help as needed. We've also continued our lab meeting through Zoom and started a weekly journal club. 2. What pieces of suggestion would you offer early career researchers on utilizing this time? First, it's important to appreciate that people respond differently to situations like this. My first advice would be to carefully consider your own mental state and address any anxiety you may experience. I think it's useless to try to get intellectual work done when you're in the wrong frame of mind. This is generally true and it's even more relevant during this time. So, just like an athlete before a sporting event, scientists need to learn to chill and relax. The second point is to revisit your objectives and expectations. Have a plan. Otherwise, it's been said elsewhere that researchers can engage in a number of activities that do not require a wet lab: writing, reading, training, computational analyses etc. In biology, everyone has been busy producing data. It's data, data, data! But if the data isn't shared and published, it's generally useless. Now, perhaps there is more time to process and share unpublished datasets. There are many open platforms that allow you to publish datasets and bare-bone mini-publications, which shouldn't take that long to produce. If the dataset is worth sharing, then anyone who curates it and analyses it should be in a position to publish it (with due credit to everyone involved of course). That still would be a valued and valuable contribution to add to a CV. We have identified such old unpublished datasets in my lab, and we hope that the extra time offered by this situation would allow us to share and release these data in the coming weeks. 3. How is the cooperation of members in your lab and institute? How do you keep track of their work progress? It's the same as always. We continue our weekly lab meeting and that's our primary forum through which lab members update everyone about their projects. We also have ad-hoc team meetings as needed. The only difference is that this has gone online, but Zoom is working just fine and I'm amazed at how quickly everyone has adjusted to this model. 4. Some journals have come up with guidelines to support researchers in this time of difficulty. What do you think is the role of journals at this time and what more do you think they can do? I'm much more interested in highlighting the key role of preprint servers in this crisis. First, preprints, such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, have accelerated the dissemination of new COVID-19 research. Second, preprints allow immediate sharing of all those papers that scientists are writing up during lockdowns. I don't think the classic journal model can cope with a surge in submissions as the system is already overloaded. Many articles will get stuck in the outdated model of journal pre-publication peer review. Just imagine how we would cope without bioRxiv at the moment. All that good science would be held up for months and months for no one to see except for an editor and a few reviewers. 5. Do you think this time might serve as a cooling-off period for researchers from the usual monotony of lab work? If so, how productive do you foresee the immediate future after the restoration of normalcy? Scientific research should never be monotonous. Who says planning, executing and interpreting experiments can be boring? As my friend and colleague Ken Shirasu likes to remind us, "Science is the ultimate entertainment for humankind." So just enjoy and cherish being a scientist whether you're in a lab or at home. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://community.plantae.org/article/5518989600502056934/lockdown-conversations |
| Description | Presentation "The Two-Speed Genomes of Filamentous Plant Pathogens" at the 2015 DOE JGI Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A talk at the 2015 DOE JGI Genomics of Energy & Environment Meeting "The Two-Speed Genomes of Filamentous Plant Pathogens" http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/115841932400/watch-sophiens-talk-at-the-2015-doe-jgi-genomics http://youtu.be/kogoAS_9Bgk |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/115841932400/watch-sophiens-talk-at-the-2015-doe-jgi-genomics |
| Description | Presentation Plant pathology in the post-genomics era at BASF Science Symposium: sustainable food chain - from field to table, Jun 23-24, 2015, Chicago |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A presentation at the BASF Science Symposium: sustainable food chain - from field to table, Jun 23-24, 2015, Chicago. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/122151022390/plant-pathology-in-the-post-genomics-era |
| Description | Presentation and debate: What are world class science outputs? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A presentation on What are world class science outputs? NRP Doctoral Training Programme Summer Conference 2015, The Assembly House, Norwich, Thursday 18th June |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/121748816600/what-are-world-class-science-outputs |
| Description | Public Lecture: Keeping up with the plant destroyers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Tuesday 9 December, 6.30pm Inaugural Lectures Autumn 2014 University of East Anglia Keeping up with the plant destroyers Professor Sophien Kamoun (School of Biological Sciences / The Sainsbury Laboratory) Attendance is free and open to all. Free drinks reception after the talk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/100740813820/tuesday-9-december-630pm-inaugural-lectures |
| Description | Scoop.it page "Plants and Microbes" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Everything related to the science of plant-microbe interactions. Curated by Kamoun Lab @ TSL >450K page views. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014,2015,2016,2017,2018,2019 |
| URL | https://www.scoop.it/topic/mpmi |
| Description | Ten things we learned in 2010-2019 (aside from everything else) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This last decade has been such an exhilarating period of exploration and discovery for me, my team and my collaborators that I just can't resist the urge to write this post. The decade took us through unexpected research paths that I would have never imagined ten years ago. As I'm drafting these words during my holidays break in Sri Lanka-in between tasting the local milk rice curries and soaking the soft Indian ocean December sunshine-I'm reflecting on the local proverb above and I'm using it as my lame excuse to offer you yet another list of decadal achievements. Please note that this is my personal highly biased perspective on ten things we have learned in 2010-2019. This list is by no means meant to be comprehensive review of advances in our research field but rather a reflection of my own personal take on the scientific topics we investigate. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/190367273015/ten-things-we-learned-in-2010-2019-aside-from |
| Description | The Biochemist: How to trick a plant pathogen? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Plants can get sick too. In fact, they get infected by all types of microbes and little critters. But plants have evolved an effective immune system to fight off pathogen invasion. Amazingly, nearly every single plant cell is able to protect itself and its neighbours against infections. The plant immune system gets switched on when one of its many immune receptors matches a ligand in the pathogen. As a consequence of a long evolutionary history of fighting off pathogens, immune receptors are now encoded by hundreds of genes that populate the majority of plant genomes. Understanding how the plant immune system functions and how it has evolved can give invaluable insights that would benefit modern agriculture and help breeding disease-resistant crops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article/42/4/14/226035/How-to-trick-a-plant-pathogen |
| Description | TheMetaNews: Interview-< |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Chercheur en pathologie des plantes au Royaume-Uni, Sophien Kamouns'est tout récemment fait pirater son identité par une revue prédatrice. Comment vous êtes-vous rendu compte du piratage de votre identité ? J'ai reçu un email du Research journal of plant pathology, qui a attiré mon attention car il me remerciait d'avoir "reviewé" des articles pour leur compte. Il y avait le mot de passe de "mon" profil en bas du mail, j'ai donc pu y accéder et réaliser que j'étais censé avoir rendu quatre rapports (très mauvais d'ailleurs), alors que je n'ai jamais travaillé pour cette revue. Avez-vous contacté les éditeurs de la revue pour avoir des explications ? J'en doutais au départ mais il s'agit de vraies personnes ! Un chercheur aux Etats-Unis, un autre en Chine, les deux assez reconnus. J'en ai parlé à l'administration de mon institut et nous avons décidé que je ne les contacterai pas personnellement, mais d'agir de manière formelle. Une lettre signée de mon institut est en cours de rédaction, à l'attention de la revue, ainsi que des deux éditeurs. C'est également mon employeur qui décidera s'il y a lieu d'engager des poursuites judiciaires. Quel est le meilleur moyen de lutter contre les revues prédatrices ? Par la transparence. Je suis pour un système << publish & filter >>, et non l'inverse, où le peer-review se fait sur des plateformes dédiées comme PREreview, après mise en ligne du preprint. Les maisons d'édition historiques ne sont pas forcément un gage de qualité du peer-review même si les chercheurs se cachent souvent derrière le fait qu'un article est publié dans Nature pour ne pas se poser de questions. Cela peut être très dangereux, comme nous montre le cas de l'article liant vaccination et autisme, qui a finalement été retiré mais 18 ans après sa publication. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://sco.lt/5RgfkO |
| Description | Video commentary on the structure and activation mechanism of NLR type plant immune receptor ZAR1 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Stunning news from China! Check CCTV13 news report on the resistosome featuring Jijie Chai and Jian-Min Zhouwith a brief cameo by yours truly. This program's audience share was ~2.3% or about 30 million people give or take More coverage via iPlants WeChat Group, which includes a cool animation by Jian-Min's Lab. Here is also the video interview commissioned by the authors and the commentary by Hiroaki Adachi and Abbas Maqbool. It's truly cause for celebration. At long last, a structure of a full length NLR immune receptor and much more. And you heard it first on Twitter. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://kamounlab.tumblr.com/post/184056312400/stunning-news-from-china-check-cctv13-news-report |
| Description | YTRB Interview Series: Sophien Kamoun...à la poursuite de l'émerveillement perpétuel |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Invité du jour, Pr. Sophien Kamoun, Group Leader au Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK, et expert mondialement connu des plant pathogens, entre autre...nous parle de sa philosophie de la science... |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/UumHQ6P7mAI |