The study reveals that barley and wheat tandem kinase proteins (TKPs) Rmo2 and Rwt7 detect distinct blast fungus effectors through integrated HMA domains, employing different protein interfaces with nanomolar affinity. Structural analysis identified key interface residues that govern effector recognition, enabling the engineering of TKPs with dual specificity, thereby demonstrating the programmability of HMA domains for crop disease resistance.

The authors used a bottom‑up thermodynamic modelling framework to investigate how plants decode calcium signals, starting from Ca2+ binding to EF‑hand proteins and extending to higher‑order decoding modules. They identified six universal Ca2+-decoding modules that can explain variations in calcium sensitivity among kinases and provide a theoretical basis for interpreting calcium signal amplitude and frequency in plant cells.