Steinbrenner Lab
Principal Investigator: Adam D Steinbrenner
Institution: University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY Immune systems across kingdoms of life recognize pathogen-associated molecules through germline-encoded innate immune receptors. Receptor repertoires in plants have evolved to detect an especially diverse set of ligands due to massive expansion of the receptor kinase gene family with specialized ligand recognition functions. Pairing receptor sequence diversity with specific recognition functions across 100 million RK genes (350,000 plant species * 500 receptors per genome) is a grand challenge in plant molecular biology. It also presents the opportunity to develop a new class of protein-based sensors for biotechnology. The Steinbrenner lab aims to characterize and deploy this vast plant immunodiversity for ligand-induced modulation of engineered signaling pathways. First, we will define the full ligand space that is monitored by plant receptors by focusing on the large subfamily of leucine-rich repeat receptor kinases (termed receptors here) which bind small peptide epitopes to initiate immune signaling. We will combine evolution- and structure-guided approaches to decode the basis of receptor:ligand specificity, including an extensive phylogenomic analysis, peptide…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM151272-04: Immunodiversity of plant receptor kinase networks for synthetic circuit design (2026)
- 5R35GM151272-03: Immunodiversity of plant receptor kinase networks for synthetic circuit design (2025)
- 5R35GM151272-02: Immunodiversity of plant receptor kinase networks for synthetic circuit design (2024)
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