Lifeboat Foundation

Many of the bacteria that ravage crops and threaten our food supply employ a shared tactic to induce disease: they inject a cocktail of harmful proteins directly into the plant’s cells.

For 25 years, biologist Sheng-Yang He and his senior research associate Kinya Nomura have been investigating this set of molecules that plant pathogens use to cause diseases in hundreds of crops globally, from rice to apple orchards.

Now, thanks to a team effort between three collaborating research groups, they may finally have an answer to how these molecules make plants sick — and a way to disarm them.