Welcome to the Laboratory

Defense and Recovery of Plants

News

December 2025: Our work about the role TOPLESS family in the regulation of PAMP-triggered immunity was presented at the Science for Life meeting in Utrecht.

November 2025: Our study from LettuceKnow on the identification of a first PAMP receptor in lettuce is on bioRxiv! The work is led by Iñigo Bañales. This receptor belongs to LRR-type receptor-like kinases and recognizes highly conserved heptapeptide motif within NEP1-like proteins found in prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes.

October 2025: Lettuce Expression Browser, a result of our work in the LettuceKnow consortium, is available to public, and the preprint can be found on bioRxiv.

October 2025: Revika Sethi, MSc student in the program Science and Business Management (UU), starts her major research internship with Leroy on the growth-immunity crosstalk control by transcription factors in lettuce.

October 2025: Our research on growth-defense trade-off in lettuce with Bart Schimmel from LettuceKnow as a lead researcher is highlighted by NPEC (Netherlands Plant Ecophenotyping Centre)

August 2025: Paper published in PNAS in August 2025 (in collaboration with the Parker laboratory at MPIPZ, led by Junli Wang)

  • Effect of PAMP nlp24 treatment on Arabidopsis growth
  • lettuce diversity set
  • bremia on lettuce in the field
  • P. infestans on potato
  • Bremia on lettuce seedlings
  • Arabidopsis treated with PAMP in NPEC
  • P. infestans on potato
  • flowering lettuce
  • Arabidopsis infected with downy mildew
  • ROS burst in microtiter plates
  • lettuce seedligns
  • lettuce diversity set
  • lettuce diversity set
  • Lab logo
Our mission

Climate change and the increasing demands of society for sustainably produced high-quality food pose big challenges to crop production. It is therefore important to explore diverse and complementary strategies to improving plant health and yield stability.

Our laboratory studies mechanisms of (1) how plants activate their immune responses using receptors and defense hormones, and (2) how plants tune or turn down the strength of these immune reactions to enable growth and development.

With this knowledge and through collaborations with societal partners, we aim to find solutions that improve plant disease resilience and their ability to recover after the disease.

How to find us

We are embedded within the Translational Plant Biology group, in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science at Utrecht University

Our visiting address: East wing, 2nd floor of the Hugo Kruyt building, offices O.208-O.211, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands