Staff profile

Adam Bentham completed a Bachelor of Biotechnology (Hons) at Flinders University, South Australia, in 2013. There, he began research into plant innate immunity, focusing on the function of plant intracellular immune receptors and their recognition of secreted pathogen virulence proteins (effectors). In 2014, Adam undertook a PhD in structural biology in the laboratory of Prof. Boštjan Kobe at the University of Queensland, determining the structural and biophysical basis for plant immune receptor activation.

In 2017, Adam joined the laboratory of Prof. Mark Banfield at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, where he studied the structural basis of plant-microbe interactions as a postdoctoral researcher. During his postdoc, Adam determined the structures of several pathogen effectors in complex with various host targets and embarked on plant immune receptor engineering to expand disease resistance in staple crops. In 2023, Adam joined The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich as a senior postdoctoral researcher looking into the functions of effector proteins from the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae.

In 2024, Adam was appointed to the Department of Bioscience as part of the newly founded Centre for Programmable Biological Matter. His research now focuses on the use of AI-based protein design to bioengineer novel plant-microbe interactions, facilitating a variety of essential processes, including nitrogen fixation and disease resistance.

Journal Article

• Complexity of the lichen symbiosis revealed by metagenome and transcriptome analysis of Xanthoria parietina
  
  Tagirdzhanova, G., Scharnagl, K., Sahu, N., Yan, X., Bucknell, A., Bentham, A. R., Jégousse, C., Ament-Velásquez, S. L., Onuț-Brännström, I., Johannesson, H., MacLean, D., & Talbot, N. J. (2025). Complexity of the lichen symbiosis revealed by metagenome and transcriptome analysis of Xanthoria parietina. Current Biology, 35(4), 799-817.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.041
• Bioengineering a plant NLR immune receptor with a robust binding interface toward a conserved fungal pathogen effector
  
  Zdrzałek, R., Xi, Y., Langner, T., Bentham, A. R., Petit-Houdenot, Y., De la Concepcion, J. C., Harant, A., Shimizu, M., Were, V., Talbot, N. J., Terauchi, R., Kamoun, S., & Banfield, M. J. (2024). Bioengineering a plant NLR immune receptor with a robust binding interface toward a conserved fungal pathogen effector. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(28). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2402872121
• The WY Domain of an RxLr Effector Drives Interactions with a Host Target Phosphatase to Mimic Host Regulatory Proteins and Promote Phytophthora infestans Infection
  
  Bentham, A. R., Wang, W., Trusch, F., Varden, F. A., Birch, P. R. J., & Banfield, M. J. (2024). The WY Domain of an RxLr Effector Drives Interactions with a Host Target Phosphatase to Mimic Host Regulatory Proteins and Promote Phytophthora infestans Infection. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 37(3), 239-249. https://doi.org/10.1094/mpmi-08-23-0118-fi
• Allelic compatibility in plant immune receptors facilitates engineering of new effector recognition specificities
  
  Bentham, A. R., De la Concepcion, J. C., Benjumea, J. V., Kourelis, J., Jones, S., Mendel, M., Stubbs, J., Stevenson, C. E. M., Maidment, J. H. R., Youles, M., Zdrzałek, R., Kamoun, S., & Banfield, M. J. (2023). Allelic compatibility in plant immune receptors facilitates engineering of new effector recognition specificities. The Plant Cell, 35(10), 3809-3827. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad204
• Pathways to engineering plant intracellular NLR immune receptors
  
  Zdrzałek, R., Stone, C., De la Concepcion, J. C., Banfield, M. J., & Bentham, A. R. (2023). Pathways to engineering plant intracellular NLR immune receptors. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 74, 102380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbi.2023.102380
• A single amino acid polymorphism in a conserved effector of the multihost blast fungus pathogen expands host-target binding spectrum
  
  Bentham, A. R., Petit-Houdenot, Y., Win, J., Chuma, I., Terauchi, R., Banfield, M. J., Kamoun, S., & Langner, T. (2021). A single amino acid polymorphism in a conserved effector of the multihost blast fungus pathogen expands host-target binding spectrum. PLoS Pathogens, 17(11), Article e1009957. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1009957
• A molecular roadmap to the plant immune system
  
  Bentham, A. R., De la Concepcion, J. C., Mukhi, N., Zdrzałek, R., Draeger, M., Gorenkin, D., Hughes, R. K., & Banfield, M. J. (2020). A molecular roadmap to the plant immune system. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 295(44), 14916-14935. https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.rev120.010852