Last night I had a dream about a new project

If Flower Bioengineering & Breeding sparks your curiosity, explore more at openflower.bio 🌸🧬 Designed and built by me, with love 🌱

PLEASE SHARE! New job openings in my lab @zmbp-tuebingen.bsky.social. We have a broad interest into the mechanistic basis of how molecular complexes are rewired during cellular development in plants and during invasion by pathogens. 🌱🍄🔬 See details below 👇 #PlantSciJobs

Out in @natplants.nature.com, mapping of brassinosteroid chemical features required for (1) receptor binding, (2) ligand positioning and (3) co-receptor recruitment. Fantastic work by Alberto Caregnato & @hmchen93.bsky.social and our friends in Olomouc. Funding:@snf-fns.ch -> doi.org/10.1038/s414...

New OA Article: "A VIM2/4 deletion, and premature truncations of CMT2 and FBX5, drive DNA methylation changes after colonization of a novel habitat" rdcu.be/fxOCc Cape Verde Arabidopsis rapidly evolved altered DNA methylation patterns through high-impact mutations. #PlantScience

Rewired meristem regulation drives morphological evolution of the one-leaf developmental system in Monophyllaea glabra https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.05.742951v1

🔬 TECHNICAL INNOVATION 🔬 Tietz et al. provide optimized workflows for establishing Rhizobium rhizogenes-mediated transgenic or CRISPR-edited hairy root cultures for grapevine species, with protocols that can be adapted for other plant species 🌱 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

Mutating 6 genes to change one Petunia species into another: Reconstruction of speciation by modification of major-effect genes in Petunia: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Reconstruction of speciation by modification of major-effect genes in Petunia

By modifying six genes in the hawkmoth-pollinated Petunia axillaris, Lüthi and Chopy et al. reconstructed the evolutionary shift to bee-pollinated P. secreta. The engineered mimic is indistinguishable...

cell.com

Oh wow

Nina Friedman@ngfriedman.bsky.social · 2d ago

Starting in Spring or Summer 2027 K99/R00 (under its new activity code KT1/R00) will only be available to US citizens, permanent residents, and non-citizen nationals. I am hearing this from many program officers, but NIH has yet to make an official statement to my knowledge.

So cool!

Alex de Mendoza@alexdemendoza.bsky.social · 2d ago

Sailing in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ready for summer, our study on the iconic Portuguese man o' war 🪼 is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... We use (epi)genomics to understand a critter that fascinates me since childhood. Massive team effort with @obog.bsky.social, Cummins and Neely groups. 🧵

Sailing in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ready for summer, our study on the iconic Portuguese man o' war 🪼 is out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6.... We use (epi)genomics to understand a critter that fascinates me since childhood. Massive team effort with @obog.bsky.social, Cummins and Neely groups. 🧵

I'm a fan of the new(ish) Comparative Genome Viewer feature on NCBI: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cgv which provides interactive whole-genome riparian plots, like this for Helicoverpa sp, which allows you to quickly and easily examine interesting features. Only a handful of genomes on there for now though!

Officially recruiting postdocs at GW. If you are interested in genetic novelty, structural variation, or evo genetics please get in touch! We have data sets on mulitple organisms with large population sizes (Drosophila, Megalonaias nervosa) and species in decline (fireflies, mussels, elephants).

Bluesky is a "liberal bubble" because fascist chuds can't get traction without algorithmic assistance and because people here trained themselves to block "debate me" trybois the instant they roll up

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

Happy to finally see this out in a peer-reviewed form 🧬🌱 Congrats to everyone who contributed! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The dual trxG/PcG protein ULTRAPETALA1 modulates H3K27me3 and directly enhances POLYCOMB REPRESSIVE COMPLEX 2 activity for fine-tuned reproductive transitions - Nature Plants

This study reports a bivalent factor, ULTRAPETALA1, that can counteract as well as promote PRC2 activity at hundreds of developmental genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. The pro-PRC2 activity of ULTRAPETAL...

nature.com

RA position working on Marchantia reproductive development in the Penfield group at JIC. Deadline is August 18th!

John Innes Centre@johninnescentre.bsky.social · 2d ago

VACANCY - We’re looking for a Research Assistant to join the Penfield Group, working to understand the effects of temperature on plant reproductive development. https://okt.to/Yx9K5e Deadline - 18 August 2026 Contract - Until 7 August 2029, full-time

Engineering eudicot-like lignin in rice via targeted disruption of grass-specific lignin modification pathways https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.02.742291v1

www.nature.com/articles/s41... It's been a long time coming, but delighted to say that the first major output from my Royal Society Fellowship is now published. 🙂 #PlantScience

The post-fertilization archegonium gene network of seedless plants contributed to the origin of seeds - Nature Communications

The authors identify conserved gene networks across fern and angiosperm reproductive development, including between the sporophyte ovule and the fern gametophyte egg-chamber. Repurposing of this netwo...

nature.com

🌱 From Nature Communications: Hybrid vigor in maize may arise partly from master regulatory genes coordinating the activity of hundreds of other genes. (Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra) ▶️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PlantScience #PlantBiology #Genetics

The incomplete dominance of gene expression controlled by Trans-eQTL hotspots contributes to heterosis in maize - Nature Communications

This study shows that maize hybrids exhibit increased transcriptome activity than inbred parents in an incomplete dominance manner, contributing to hybrid vigor. This increase is primarily regulated b...

nature.com

careers.umass.edu/jobs/assista...

Assistant Professor - Plant Health & Microbe Interactions - Amherst, Massachusetts, United States

Title: Assistant Professor - Plant Health & Microbe Interactions Executive Area: Academic Affairs College/School/MBU: College of Natural Sciences Department: Stockbridge Sch of Agriculture Work Lo...

careers.umass.edu

I talked to my department chair about 2 of my proposals got rejected last month and that I am trying to resubmit them soon. Chair: It's good that you don't seem discouraged by this at all! Me: Well the more I am rejected the more I need to apply. That's just how the math goes, unfortunately.

Minor improvements to our previous estimate bsky.app/profile/joan... of which amino acids are enriched vs depleted in LUCA (indicating their order of appearance) strengthened the signal that small amino acids came first. 2/13

Joanna Masel@joannamasel.bsky.social · 2y ago

We identified protein domains in LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Their distinctive amino acid usage reveals the order amino acids were added to the genetic code, based mostly on size. Older proteins hint at earlier alternative codes. 1/15 @seekingluca.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Here is some of that good news you've been looking for.

Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · 2d ago

It. WORKED!!! The calling and comments and yelling! It works. It's a temporary stall but it can be made permanent. www.scientificamerican.com/article/sena...

Major #Botany2026 FOMO, but the drive MA->OR starts this week. So, sharing from afar: I’m recruiting grad students for my new lab at OSU! Info: www.mckenzie-lab.org . We're going to have FUN with systematics, speciation genomics, methods, natural history, and more in North Am angiosperms. Reach out!

University of Michigan (@umich.edu) is hiring: Assistant Professor - Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology #assistantprofessor #biology #molecularcellular

An injury-responsive bHLH is required for regenerative responses following mechanical injury in adult Schistosoma mansoni https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.31.742058v1

I made a little web tool for myself to drop in a PDF or paste in a link to a PDF and get back markdown. It's at stephenturner.github.io/pdfdown/ - maybe it's useful to you. Everything stays local in your browser. More info: blog.stephenturner.us/p/pdfdown-in...

pdfdown: in-browser PDF to markdown

...

blog.stephenturner.us

Normally I’m not a cat but person, but look at this adorable dense hairball!

Current Biology@currentbiology.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Manul/Pallas' Cat is a wild felid of arid Asian highlands and has the densest and longest fur of all #cats A new study by Jiaqing Yuan &co finds that it belongs to a distinct lineage despite many traits shared with cats in genus Felis www.cell.com/current-biol... Image: tinyurl.com/yc6banxa

Survived the 1st year as an assistant prof. Excited to start teaching in a few weeks. I will be teaching bioinformatics. And I want to do a good job teaching, since: 1. So much of my paycheck came from tuition money. 2. The subject is important. I feel like there is bigger purpose beyond myself.

Every day, I hear a new-to-me falsehood that I never thought was possible. Disinformation regarding vector-borne diseases, in particular, seems to be a frequent among those who would undermine & dismantle public health.

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 3d ago

RFK told Dana Bash that Lyme disease “almost certainly” came from gain of function research. Which is utterly false. www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...