Professor Jonathan Jones, Group Leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL), has been named a 2025 Wolf Prize Laureate in Agriculture “for groundbreaking discoveries in the immune system and disease resistance in plants.” He shares the prestigious award with Professors Jeffery L. Dangl and Brian J. Staskawicz.
The pioneering work of Professors Jones, Dangl, and Staskawicz laid the foundation for our current understanding of the plant immune system. Staskawicz identified the first bacterial avirulence effector gene, providing key molecular evidence for the “gene-for-gene” theory. This discovery, along with the parallel work of Jones and Dangl, opened the door to the field of plant immunity. Staskawicz also demonstrated that bacterial avirulence proteins can function as virulence factors inside plant cells. Jones was the first to clone plant resistance genes, encoding eukaryotic cell surface immune receptors, and all three researchers identified multiple intracellular immune receptors. Jones and Dangl independently uncovered the mechanisms behind the activation of these immune receptors.
Together, their discoveries of pathogen effector proteins and plant immune receptors illuminated the activation process and the subsequent signaling pathways that protect plants from disease, according to a press release.
In 2006, Dangl and Jones published a landmark review in Nature, providing the first detailed model of the plant immune system, which has since become a textbook reference. In a 2024 Cell review, Jones, Dangl, and Staskawicz summarized 50 years of discoveries in plant immunity. Their work has significantly shaped the field and contributed to strategies aimed at enhancing plant resistance and controlling a wide range of plant diseases.
“It’s wonderful to see this recognition of the importance of understanding the basic mechanisms that underpin plant disease resistance; without that knowledge, we will not be able to establish durable disease resistance in our crops,” said Jones.
In 2010, Sir David Baulcombe — one of TSL’s first senior scientists — was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture “for pioneering discovery of gene regulation by small inhibitory RNA molecules in plants.”
The Wolf Prize, awarded annually, honors exceptional individuals in scientific and artistic disciplines. In science, the prize is given in Medicine, Agriculture, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics. Now in its 46th year, the Wolf Prize has recognized 382 scientists and artists worldwide for their transformative contributions.
