Prof. Jeffrey Dangle, Prof. Jonathan Jones and Prof. Brian Stacekevich won the prestigious award for their contributions to understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease resistance in plants and developing strategies for crop improvement.
Plants are susceptible to a wide range of pathogens, including fungi, bacteria and viruses, which can cause significant crop losses and threaten the global food supply. It has been known for years that within the same plant species there is variation in disease resistance, resulting from the presence of dominant alleles in genes that confer resistance. The “gene-gene” hypothesis of the 40s proposed that gene components for plant resistance interact with gene products for pathogen virulence. However, the nature and function of plant resistance genes remained elusive until the mid-20s.
Much of what is known today about the plant immune system comes from the groundbreaking discoveries of Jeffrey Dangel, Jonathan Jones, and Brian Staszkowitz. Staszkowitz was the first to identify a bacterial virulence gene, providing crucial molecular evidence in support of the “gene-gene” theory. This discovery, along with the parallel work of Jones and Dangel, paved the way for the study of plant immunity. Staszkowitz was also the first to show that bacterial virulence proteins may play a role in virulence within the plant cell.
Jones was the first to clone plant resistance genes encoding immune receptors on the eukaryotic cell membrane, and all three identified several intracellular immune receptors. Jones and Dangel independently discovered the mechanisms for immune receptor activation through indirect recognition of pathogen violence proteins, both by extracellular and intracellular immune receptors. The discovery of pathogen violence proteins and immune receptors in plants led to a deeper understanding of the process of activation of these receptors upon pathogen recognition, and also revealed the cellular signaling pathways that are activated as a result.
A seminal review article published in 2006 in Nature by Dangel and Jones first presented a detailed model of the plant immune system, which has become a foundational model in the field and is now included in textbooks. In 2024, in another review article published in Cell, Jones, Dangel, and Staszkiewicz summarized five decades of discoveries in plant immune research. Their combined contributions have largely shaped our current understanding of the field and led to the development of targeted strategies to improve resistance and combat a wide range of plant diseases.
Jeffrey Dangle
Jeffrey Dangle (born 1957), Professor of Biology and Research Fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dangle received a BA in Modern Literature from Stanford University (1980), a MA in Life Sciences from Stanford University (1981), and a PhD from the Department of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1986 for his research on genetically engineered chimeric monoclonal antibodies in the laboratory of Professor Leonard A. Herzenberg.
Brian Stacekevich
Brian Stacekevich, 1952 (USA), Professor and Head of the Department of Plant and Microorganism Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Department of Sustainable Agriculture at the Institute for Innovative Genomics (IGI). He received a BA in Biology from Bates College (1974), a MS in Forestry – Tree Pathology from Yale University (1976), and a PhD in Plant Pathology from the University of California, Berkeley (1980). Stacekevich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and a fellow of the American Society of Plant Pathology and the American Academy of Microbiology.
Jonathan Jones
Jonathan Jones (born 1954, England) has been a researcher at the Sainsbury Laboratories in Cambridge, UK, since 1988, where he has twice served as head of the laboratory, and is also a professor at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Jones received a B.A. in botany from the University of Cambridge (1976) and a Ph.D. in plant genetics from the University of Cambridge (1980). After a postdoctoral fellowship on symbiotic nitrogen fixation under Fred Oswell at Harvard University (1982–1981), he worked at AGS in Oakland, California, where he collaborated with Hugo Donner on transposons in maize and tobacco. Jones is also a consultant to the Danforth Center and the Blades Foundation.
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