Plants deploy a diverse array of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which perceive microbe-associated molecular patterns to activate immune responses. Leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase subgr...

Bacterial defense systems present considerable barriers to both phage infection and plasmid transformation. These systems target mobile genetic elements, limiting the efficacy of bacteriophage-based t...

Bacterial genome evolution is shaped to a great extent by horizontal gene transfer, detectable as genes with a presence-absence pattern of variation that does not follow phylogenetic relationships acr...

Background Because transposable elements (TEs) can cause heritable genetic changes, past work on TE mobility in Arabidopsis thaliana has mostly focused on new TE insertions in the germline of hypometh...

Plants are natural bioengineers, and we illustrate how the stunning diversity in plant immune receptors can be translated into engineering efforts from Ara

An all-in-one CRISPR toolbox is developed to aid guide RNA library-based loss-of-function and gain-of-function screens in plants.

A comprehensive single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of Arabidopsis across multiple tissues enables the quantification of leaf cell aging state at a single-cell level, highlighting the senescence-relat...

Starships form a recently discovered superfamily of giant transposons in Pezizomycotina fungi, implicated in mediating horizontal transfer of diverse cargo genes between fungal genomes. Their elusive nature has long obscured their significance, and their impact on genome evolution remains poorly understood. Here, we reveal a surprising abundance and diversity of Starships in the phytopathogenic fungus Verticillium dahliae. Remarkably, Starships dominate the plastic genomic compartments involved in host colonization, are enriched in virulence-associated genes, and exhibit genetic and epigenetic characteristics associated with adaptive genome evolution. We further uncover extensive horizontal transfer of Starships between Verticillium species and, strikingly, from distantly related Fusarium fungi. Finally, we demonstrate how Starship activity facilitated the de novo formation of a novel virulence gene. Our findings illuminate the profound influence of Starship dynamics on fungal genome evolution and the development of virulence. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Arabidopsis thaliana was the first plant for which a high-quality genome sequence became available. The publication of the first reference genome sequence almost 25 years ago was already accompanied b...